Robert B. Shaw, Robert D. Webster and Christine M. Bern

Plants annual or perennial; cespitose, sometimes with short rhizomes or stolons, not producing subterranean spikelets. Culms 20-250 cm, erect or decumbent, usually with 2-5 nodes. Sheaths open; auricles absent; ligules membranous, ciliate. Inflorescences terminal, panicles of spikelike branches on elongate rachises; branches with many pedicellate, loosely appressed spikelets, terminating in a spikelet, without stiff bristles or flat bracts, spikelets in pairs, triplets, or solitary, often solitary distally when in pairs or triplets at the middle of the branches; pedicels terminating in a well-developed disk; disarticulation below the glume(s). Spikelets with 2 florets, lower florets usually sterile, upper florets bisexual. Lower glumes typically reduced (sometimes absent) and fused with the glabrous callus to form a cuplike structure; upper glumes lanceolate to ovate, glabrous or variously pubescent, 3-9-veined, unawned or awned; lower lemmas similar to the upper glumes in length, shape, venation, and pubescence, unawned; lower paleas absent to fully developed; upper lemmas lanceolate to ovate, indurate, rugose, dull, glabrous, rounded on the back, veins not pronounced, margins involute; anthers 3; lodicules 2, papery; styles with 2 branches, purple, plumose. Caryopses not longitudinally grooved; endosperm solid. x = 9. Name from the Greek erion, wool, and chloe, grass, a reference to the usually pubescent pedicels and rachises.

Eriochloa, a genus of 20-30 species, grows in tropical, subtropical, and warm-temperate areas of the world. Eight species of Eriochloa are native to the Flora region and three are introduced. Of the three introduced species only two, E. polystachya and E. pseudoacrotricha, have become naturalized.

Only one native species, Eriochloa sericea, is abundant enough to be an important forage species. The introduced E. polystachya is also used for for this purpose.

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SELECTED REFERENCES Shaw, R.B. and F.E. Smeins. 1981. Some anatomical and morphological characteristics of the North American species of Eriochloa (Poaceae: Paniceae). Bot. Gaz. 142:534-544; Shaw, R.B. and R.D. Webster. 1987. The genus Eriochloa (Poaceae: Paniceae) in North and Central America. Sida 12:165-207.

Global distribution of Eriochloa.

Note: GBIF records include introduced and cultivated plants. Consequently, the distribution shown often differs from statements about a taxon's native distribution.