| Monocotyledon | Literature for Dactyloctenium aegyptium
Wagner et al., 1990, 1999; Lorence & Wagner, 2019. |
| Poaceae -- The Grass Family | Bibliography |
| Dactyloctenium aegyptium | |
Common name(s): beach wiregrass |
| General Information | ||
|---|---|---|
| Distribution | Native to the Paleotropics, now a pantropical weed.In the Hawaiian Islands, naturalized on Midway, Kaua`i, O`ahu, Moloka`i, Lana`i, Maui, Kaho`olawe, Hawai`i. |
|
| Habit |
Annual, slender to moderately robust,
spreading; culms 70‒100 cm tall, usually geniculately ascending and rooting at proximal nodes, usually stoloniferous and mat forming. |
|
| Leaves |
Leaves with sheath 2.5‒4 cm long, compressed, glabrous or with a few bulbous based hairs on the keel; ligule a narrow fimbriate membrane; blade flat, 3‒25 cm long, 2.5‒7.5(‒12) mm wide, papillose hispid, especially along margin. Inflorescences composed of (1‒)3‒9 linear to narrowly oblong spikes 1.2‒6.5 cm long, ascending to radiating horizontally from top of culm. Spikelets 3‒4-flowered, broadly ovate, 3.5‒4.5 mm long; glumes
subequal, 1.5‒2.2 mm long, first glume
lanceolate in profile, keel thick, scabrid, second glume elliptic to narrowly obovate in profile, keel smooth, prolonged into a stout, divergent, scabrid awn 0.5‒2 times
as long as the glume; lemma narrowly
ovate to ovate in profile, 2.6‒4 mm long, keel gibbous, concave and scabrid above the middle and usually prolonged into a stout cusp or mucro to 1 mm long; palea keels ± winged. |
|
| Flowers |
Caryopses broadly obovate to triangular, ca. 1 mm long, transversely rugose. |
|
| Chromosomes |
2n = 18, 20, 22, 23, 27, 34, 36, 38, 40, 44 46, 48, 52. |
|
| Contributor |
Warren Wagner |