Heteropogon

• Authority

  Acevedo-Rodríguez, Pedro & collaborators. 1996. Flora of St. John, U.S. Virgin Islands. Mem. New York Bot. Gard. 78: 1-581.

• Family

  Poaceae

• Scientific Name

  Heteropogon

• Description

  Genus Description - Annual or perennial herbs; culms branched or unbranched above. Leaf sheaths glabrous or hairy; ligules membranous with a dense white fringe near apex; blades flat. Inflorescence a solitary, terminal spikelike raceme; each raceme included within a subtending spathelike sheath below. Spikelets 1-flowered, in pairs at the nodes of inflorescence, 1 sessile and 1 pedicellate; lower few pairs of spikelets alike, staminate, awnless, the remaining sessile spikelets bisexual, awned, the pedicellate spikelets staminate or sterile, awnless; disarticulation of entire spikelet pairs along each rachis intemode, the intemode forming a sharp, barbed callus below the fertile (sessile) spikelet; callus hairs coppery-brown (in ours). Sessile spikelet (fertile) linear to elliptical; glumes about as long as the spikelet, indurate, dark brown to black; floret hyaline, nearly as long as the spikelet; lemma with a stout geniculate antrorsely plumose awn! Pedicellate spikelet with lower glumes lanceolate, broad to winged, finely striate, greenish, twisted near apex; upper glume 3-nerved, slightly shorter than the lower glume; florets similar to those of sessile spikelets but unawned. Caryopsis with a large embryo.