Common Name: sticky sprangletop

Duration: Annual

Nativity: Native

Lifeform: Graminoid

General: Cespitose annual grass, stems low and spreading to erect, 10-60 cm long; internodes hollow; herbage viscid (sticky or gummy).

Vegetative: Blades flat, 2-15 cm long, 2-6 mm wide; sheaths scabrous; ligules membranous, 1-3 mm long, minutely jagged.

Inflorescence: Dense panicle 3-8 cm long, branches ascending to appressed for the lower 1-2 cm, with 2 rows of spikelets. Spikelets round in cross-section, 4-6 mm long, with 4-8 florets; glumes 2 mm long, the lower glumes triangular, upper glumes larger and wider than the lower; florets red, sticky; lemmas 1.5-3 mm long, ovate, with rounded, with viscid backs and hairy veins, the apices minutely 2-lobed with slender awns 0.5-1 mm long; the spikelet axis breaking apart above the glumes and between the florets.

Ecology: Found in wet places, open ground and waste places, from 1,000-3,500 ft (305-1067 m); flowering June-October.

Distribution: s AZ, s CA, s NM, sw TX; south to N MEX.

Notes: Distinguished from Leptochloa fusca (Dinebra fusca) and Leptochloa panicea (Dinebra panicea), two other Sonoran Desert annuals, by its short-awned lemmas, small dense panicles, and often prostrate and much branched habit with reddish florets. L. fusca has whitish spikelets, panicles 10-105 cm long, and lemmas that are awnless or mucronate. L. panicea also has larger panicles 8-30 cm long, with filiform, widely spaced branches, awnless lemmas, and, notably, spikelets that can be green or red.

Ethnobotany: Unknown.

Synonyms: Diplachne viscida, Leptochloa viscida

Editor: LCrumbacher 2012, FSCoburn 2015, AHazelton 2015

Etymology: Leptochloa comes from the Greek leptos, "slender," and chloe or chloa, "grass"; viscida means viscid, describing the small, sticky globules of brown, viscid liquid on the ends of the hairs on the stem.