Chloris pycnothrix Trin. (redirected from: Chloris leptostachya var. intermedia)
Family: Poaceae
[Chloris beyrichiana Kunth,  more...]
Chloris pycnothrix image
© Mark Hyde, Bart Wursten and Petra Ballings  

This is a weedy annual, long present in Africa and America, but spreading in recent times in Asia. The widely spreading, long-awned, feathery racemes and blunt leaf blades easily distinguish this from the other Chloris species in China. Annual or short-lived perennial, stoloniferous. Culms erect or geniculately ascending and rooting at lower nodes, 35-60 cm tall. Leaf sheaths keeled, glabrous; leaf blades flat or folded, 3-16 cm, 3-5 mm wide, glabrous, apex obtuse, often mucronulate; ligule 3-4 mm, white ciliate. Racemes digitate or in two close whorls, 7-13, ascending when young, spreading at maturity, 5-9 cm, feathery, purplish; rachis puberulous. Spikelets with 2 florets, 1- or 2-awned; glumes linear-lanceolate, acuminate-mucronate; lower glume 1-1.6 mm; upper glume 2-3.2 mm; lemma of fertile floret narrowly elliptic in side view, 2-3 mm, glabrous, scabrous in upper half, awn 9-25 mm; second floret reduced to a narrow 0.3-0.8 mm rudiment on a filiform rachilla, awn absent or erect, 3-7 mm. Fl. and fr. May-Nov. Sunny open places, roadsides and hillsides; 400-1500 m. Yunnan [India, Myanmar, Sri Lanka; Africa, America, SW Asia].

Chloris pycnothrix image
© Mark Hyde, Bart Wursten and Petra Ballings  
Chloris pycnothrix image
© Mark Hyde, Bart Wursten and Petra Ballings  
Chloris pycnothrix image
© Mark Hyde, Bart Wursten and Petra Ballings  
Chloris pycnothrix image
Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh  
Chloris pycnothrix image
Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh  
Chloris pycnothrix image
Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh  
Chloris pycnothrix image
Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh  
Chloris pycnothrix image
National Museum of Natural History Image Collection  
Chloris pycnothrix image
National Museum of Natural History Image Collection  
Chloris pycnothrix image
National Museum of Natural History Image Collection  
Chloris pycnothrix image
National Museum of Natural History Image Collection  
Chloris pycnothrix image
© Mark Hyde, Bart Wursten and Petra Ballings  
Chloris pycnothrix image
© Mark Hyde, Bart Wursten and Petra Ballings