Olyra

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

Olyra

Description

Genus Description - Monoecious, cespitose, perennial, monocarpic herbs; culms erect or often trailing. Leaves with well-developed sheath auricles; ligules membranous; pseudopetioles present; blades usually broad. Inflorescences 1 to many panicles from the uppermost nodes; open or occasionally spicate. Spikelets 1-flowered. Pistillate spikelets large, usually borne on a clavate pedicel, at the tips of branches or upper branches, disarticulating as a unit or the floret falling from the glumes, rarely the glumes falling first; glumes acuminate to awned, equal or subequal, many-nerved, membranous, longer than the floret; floret lanceolate to ovate, indurate, white, darkening at maturity, lemma margins covering the edges of the palea. Staminate spikelets small, linear to lanceolate, hyaline, early deciduous, borne on filiform pedicels, on basal portion of branches, or on the lower branches; glumes usually absent; lemma 3-9-nerved, the apex acuminate to aristate; palea as long as lemma, 2-nerved; stamens 3.

Distribution

A genus of 23 species, centered in southeastern Brazil and western Amazonia but ranging to Mexico and the West Indies south to Argentina.

Argentina South America| West Indies| México Mexico North America| Brazil South America|