Pennisetum
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Authority
Acevedo-Rodríguez, Pedro & collaborators. 1996. Flora of St. John, U.S. Virgin Islands. Mem. New York Bot. Gard. 78: 1-581.
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Family
Poaceae
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Scientific Name
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Description
Genus Description - Hermaphroditic, annual or perennial herbs, sometimes with stolons and/or rhizomes; flowering culms cespitose or not, erect or decumbent from base, sparingly branched, usually rooting at the lower nodes. Leaves without auricles; sheaths overlapping or not, smooth or scabrous, glabrous or variously pubescent; ligule a ciliate membrane or a fringe of hairs; blades filiform to linear, flat, conduplicate, or involute, appressed to the culm or spreading, smooth or scabrous, glabrous or pubescent, the margins planar or undulating. Inflorescence a solitary panicle or raceme; peduncle glabrous or pubescent, fully exserted at maturity to fully enclosed in the leaf sheath; main axis straight, stout or slender; primary branches originating at any point, appressed to the main axis or spreading, and reduced to a fascicle of spikelets, disarticulating at base of primary branches; rachis terminating in a bristle; spikelets 1-5, subtended by 1-10 bristles; pedicels present or absent; callus prolonged into a pronounced stipe, not flared and forming a discoid receptacle; lower glume when present ovate, membranous and awned, not encircling the spikelet base; upper glume 0.5-1.1 times spikelet length; lemma of lower floret sterile or staminate, lanceolate, ovate, or elliptic, not keeled, muticous, or awned; palea of lower floret fully developed, or absent, 0.4-0.9 times lemma length, ovate, lanceolate, or elliptic; stamens 3, the anthers purple; stigmas purple. Caryopsis gray, with punctiform hilum.