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Pakistan | Family List | Poaceae

Poaceae Tribe Arundineae

Perennials or rarely annuals, sometimes tall weeds or tussock grasses. Leaf-blades narrowly linear or setaceous, occasionally flat; ligule a short scarious membrane or a line of hairs. Inflorescence an open or contracted panicle, sometimes large and plumose. Spikelets bisexual or the uppermost reduced, rarely unisexual and dioecious, laterally compressed, 2-10-flowered; rhachilla disarticulating beneath each floret, often produced and crowned with a rudimentary floret, sometimes long-villous; glumes persistent, hyaline to scarious or subherbaceous; lemmas membranous to coriaceous, 1-many-nerved, ± hairy or occasionally long-villous, entire or 2-lobed, awnless or awned from the tip or sinus, the lobes also often aristate; awn geniculate with a twisted column, sometimes straight; palea hyaline, shorter than or nearly as long as the lemma; lodicules 2-3; stamens 2-3, often minute; stigmas 2. Grain with medium-sized embryo and linear hilum; starch grains com¬pound. Chromosomes small, basic number 6, 9 or 12.

Genera ± 35; cosmopolitan; 6 genera and 10 species in Pakistan.

Arundineae were originally conceived as a tribe of tall grasses with large plumose panicles. However, it is by no means a homogeneous tribe and, with the shift in emphasis from spikelet morphology to cryptic characters as tribal criteria, its distinction from Danthonieae is no longer tenable.

1 Tall reed-like grasses with large plumose panicles   (2)
+ Slender grasses without large plumose panicles   (4)
2 (1) Ligule membranous   Arundo
+ Ligule a line of hairs   (3)
3 (2) Lowest panicle branches with a silky beard at the base   Phragmites
4 (1) Lemmas notched or shallowly 2-lobed, awnless or with a minute awn in the sinus   Schismus
+ Lemmas deeply 2-lobed; awn perfect   (5)
5 (4) Ligule a line of hairs   (6)
+ Ligule a conspicuous membrane   Duthiea
6 (5) Glumes prominently 7-11-nerved, chartaceous, scabrid; lemmas densely short-hairy between the nerves   Asthenatherum
+ Glumes not prominently nerved, rather thin; lemmas not short-hairy between the nerves   Danthonia

Lower Taxa

Related Synonym(s):


Related Objects  

Flora of China  
  • FOC22_18_Arundineae.pdf
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