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Electronic Flora of South Australia species Fact Sheet

Family: Poaceae
Eragrostis falcata

Citation: Gaudich. ex Steudel, Nom. Bot. edn 2, 1:563 (1840).

Synonymy: E. trichophylla Benth., Fl. Aust. 7:644 (1878). , Poa falcata

Common name: Sickle lovegrass.

Description:
Perennial 14-60 cm high, with a somewhat thickened hairy base, sometimes rhizomatous; culms erect or ascending, sometimes stoloniferous, simple or branched, glabrous or especially the lower internodes pilose to hirsute, smooth or sometimes densely scabrous, wiry, 3-7-noded; nodes glabrous or the lower ones hairy; leaves mostly glabrous or sometimes pilose to hirsute and densely scabrous; sheaths glabrous or bearded at the orifice; blades tightly complicate or convolute, filiform, often setaceous.

Panicle 5-20x 2-11 cm, usually open; primary branches 1.5-8 cm long, secondary branches up to 2 cm long; spikelets terete or biconvex, 8-43 x 0.5-1.5 (rarely 3.6 x to 2.5) mm, closely 6-70-flowered, linear, straight or sometimes curved; rhachilla persistent, internodes 0.4-0.6 mm long; glumes cartilaginous, ovate, obtuse, keeled or sometimes rounded on the back downwards and the nerve obscure, smooth or the keel sparsely scaberulous upwards; both 1-1.8 mm long, subequal or the upper slightly larger; lemmas 1.5-2 mm long, cartilaginous with membranous upper margins and apical lobes, ovate or ovate-oblong, obtuse, entire or notched into 2 obtuse lobes, scabrous in the upper part or smooth, sparsely scaberulous upwards on the keel; lateral nerves about midway between the margin and the mid-nerve, fibbed; palea spathulate or obovate or oblong, obtuse or truncate; keels scaberulous upwards to almost smooth.

Grain dorsally compressed or subterete, ovate or oblong to elliptic or obovate.

Published illustration: Lazarides (1970) The grasses of Central Australia, pl. 38b.

Distribution:  S.Aust.: NW, LE, NU, GT, FR, EA, EP, MU.   W.Aust.; N.T.; N.S.W.

Conservation status: native

Flowering time: recorded Aug., Sept. and Feb.


SA Distribution Map based
on current data relating to
specimens held in the
State Herbarium of South Australia

Biology: Palatable.

Author: Not yet available


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