| Monocotyledon | Literature for Paspalum vaginatum
Wagner et al., 1990, 1999; Lorence & Wagner, 2019. |
| Poaceae -- The Grass Family | Bibliography |
| Paspalum vaginatum | |
Common name(s): seashore paspalum |
| General Information | ||
|---|---|---|
| Distribution | Native range unknown, now widely distributed in warm temperate and tropical sea coasts and brackish marshes worldwide.In the Hawaiian Islands, naturalized on Kaua`i, O`ahu, Moloka`i, Maui, Hawai`i. | |
| Habit |
Perennial, extensively creeping, stoloniferous, often forming extensive colonies, stolons slender and wiry to stout and slightly fleshy; culms slightly compressed, 2.5‒5(‒10) dm long, glabrous, the flowering ones usually shorter, usually grooved,
± branching, sterile culms with short,
broad, loose, often overlapping sheaths, and conspicuously distichous, stiffly ascending blades, or bladeless. |
|
| Leaves |
Leaves with sheath often keeled, with small auricles; ligule membranous, ca. 0.5 mm, with a ring of soft white hairs behind it, the hairs sometimes to 5 mm long; blade usually stiff, ascending at a uniform angle, 2.5‒15
cm long, 3‒8 mm wide at base, narrower
than summit of sheath, apex attenuate, involute, base abruptly contracted. |
|
| Flowers |
Inflorescences comprised of 2(‒5) racemes, opposite or closely approximate, at first erect and appressed together, usually spreading
or reflexed at maturity, often subfalcate, 1.5‒7.5 cm long, rachis naked at base, 1‒2(‒2.5) mm wide, triangular, flexuous, margin minutely scabrous. Spikelets pale, solitary, imbricate, oblong, 3‒4.5 mm long, 1.2‒1.5 mm wide; first glume rarely developed, second glume and first lemma equal, thin, 3‒7-veined, the midrib of both usually obscure, glabrous; first lemma usually transversely undulate, sometimes
conspicuously so; second lemma convex,
usually 3‒5-veined, apex with a few short, stiff cilia, otherwise glabrous; palea flat, 0‒2-veined, similar to lemma. |
|
| Fruit |
Caryopses narrowly obovate, slightly concavo-convex, 2.5‒3 mm long, subacute. |
|
| Chromosomes |
2n = 18, 20, 40, 60 |
|
| Contributor |
Nancy Khan |
