Northeast Wetland Flora
Field Office Guide to Plant Species
Panicum gattingeri Nash
- Family: Grass (Gramineae)
- Flowering: August-October
- Field Marks: This Panicum differs by its smooth spikelets up to 1/10 inch long, its sheaths with swollen-based hairs, its panicle occupying about 1/3 the length of the plant, and its straw-colored grains.
- Habitat: Fields, roadsides, shorelines.
- Habit: Annual herb with fibrous roots, usually rooting at the nodes.
- Stems: Prostrate at first and rooting at the nodes, becoming upright, stout, usually branched, up to 3 feet tall, with hairs swollen at the base.
- Leaves: Elongated, smooth or hairy on both surfaces, up to 1/2 inch across; sheaths with hairs swollen at the base.
- Flowers: Several in spikelets in terminal and axillary panicles, the panicles up to 6 inches long, occupying up to 1/3 the length of the plant; spikelets 1-flowered, smooth, up to 1/10 inch long, ellipsoid.
- Glumes: Lanceolate, pointed or rounded at the tip, the lower one 2/5 as long as the spikelet.
- Lemmas: Ovate, short-beaked at the tip, smooth, up to 1/10 inch long.
- Sepals: 0.
- Petals: 0.
- Stamens: 3.
- Pistils: Ovary superior, smooth.
- Fruits: Grains straw-colored, ellipsoid, pointed at the tip, about 1/12 inch long.
- Notes: Gleason and Cronquist consider this species to be the same as P. capillare. Some authors, such as Brown and Brown, call this P. capillare var. campestre. This family is referred to as Poaceae by Gleason and Cronquist.
Previous Species -- Bog Muhly (Muhlenbergia uniflora)
Return to Species List -- Group 2
Next Species -- Maiden-cane (Panicum hemitomon)
