font settings

Font Size: Large | Normal | Small
Font Face: Verdana | Geneva | Georgia

Oplismenus

(Genus)

Overview

[ Back to top ]

Perennials or annuals. Culms trailing, ascending from a decumbent base, the internodes mostly with a villous line adaxial to the subtendi ng leaf. Leaf blades ovate, lanceolate or linear-lanceolate, often with cross veins; ligule a ciliate membrane. Inflorescence composed of several unilateral racemes spaced along a central axis; racemes elongate or reduced to fascicles of a few spikelets, spikelets usually paired on short pedicels, the lowermost often reduced. Spikelets lanceolate to oblong, weakly dorsally or laterally compressed, florets 2; glumes subequal, 1/2-3/4 spikelet length, often pilose, the lower or both tipped by a viscid awn; lower lemma equaling the spikelet, acute to shortly awned, its palea absent or much reduced; upper lemma papery or subcoriaceous, smooth and shiny, acute, indistinctly crested. x = 9.

Five to nine species:throughout the tropics and subtropics; four species (one endemic) in China.

This is a genus of closely related, intergrading species where the number of taxa meriting recognition is still open to doubt.[1]

Taxonomy

[ Back to top ]

The Genus Oplismenus is further organized into finer groupings including:

Footnotes

[ Back to top ]
  1. Shou-liang Chen & Sylvia M. Phillips "Oplismenus". in Flora of China Vol. 22 Page 500, 501. Published by Science Press (Beijing) and Missouri Botanical Garden Press. Online at EFloras.org.

Sources

[ Back to top ]
Last Revised: August 24, 2012
2012/08/24 16:03:08