Eragrostis lehmanniana
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05 Mar 2009
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05 Mar 2009
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22 Mar 2008
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22 Mar 2008
| Family: | Poaceae |
| Full name: | Eragrostis lehmanniana Nees |
| ID status: | Fairly certain |
| Afrikaans common name(s): | Knietjiesgras |
| English common name(s): | Lehmann's love grass |
| Synonym(s): | - |
| Status: | Native |
| Description: | Perennial, tufted; culms usually repeatedly geniculate; sometimes prostrate at the base and rooting from the nodes, branched, with the branches often fascicled, slender, 1 to more than 2 ft. long, glabrous or smooth, rather wiry, more or less compressed, 4-noded, internodes exserted, uppermost the longest; lower sheaths short, close, firm, softly hairy to villous at the very base, persistent, upper tight, glabrous, long bearded at the mouth; ligule a fringe of short hairs; blades very narrow linear, tapering to a fine rigid point, usually filiform convolute, sometimes subulate and pungent, 2–6 in. by 0.75–1 lin., rarely longer; very rigid to subflexuous, glabrous, smooth below, scaberulous on the upper side; panicle open, ovoid to oblong, lax, 3–6 in. by 1–3 in., erect, or slightly nodding; axis filiform, smooth; lower branches 2-nate or sometimes whorled, or all solitary, unequally distant, spreading, at least ultimately, finely filiform, straight and rather rigid or subflexuous, glabrous or with hairs in the axils, longest 1–2.5 in. long, undivided for 0.167– 0.5 in. from the base, then loosely and (at length) subdivaricately branched, smooth or the ultimate divisions scaberulous; pedicels fine, the lateral rarely over 1 lin. long; spikelets linear, acute, 2–4 lin. by 0.5 lin., closely 4–13-flowered, dark olive-grey; rhachilla subpersistent, then dis-articulating, very slender, flexuous, smooth or almost so, joints 0.5 lin. long; glumes more or less unequal, lanceolate-oblong to oblong in profile, subacute to obtuse, very thin to subhyaline, scaberulous, 1-nerved or almost nerveless, margins minutely serrulate, lower about 0.666 lin., upper 0.75 lin. long; valves oblong in profile, rounded on the back, closely imbricate with the tips adpressed, obtuse, scarcely 0.125 lin. long, membranous, pallid towards the base, minutely scaberulous above the middle, side-nerves faint, sometimes whitish, keel obscure below, more distinct and scaberulous near the tip; pales equal to the valves, keels fine and scaberulous; anthers 0.375– 0.4 lin. long; grain obovoid-subellipsoid, obtusely quandrangular, over 0.25 lin. by 0.2 lin., light brown. (from JSTOR website / Flora Capensis) Is another South African species introduced to East Africa as a forage grass. It differs from E. curvula in its wiry culms and papery unridged leaf-sheaths silky pubescent at the very base. (from JSTOR website / Flora of Tropical East Africa) |
| Link(s) |
African Plant Database
JSTOR Plant Science Kew Herbarium Catalogue BGBM Berlin-Dahlem - Virtual Herbarium Züricher Herbarien Flora of Zimbabwe Fleurs de notre Terre - Galerie Namibie |
| Content last updated: | 22 Nov 2011 |
