Southern Wetland Flora
Field Office Guide to Plant Species
Phanopyrum gymnocarpon (Elliott) Nash
- Family: Grass (Poaceae)
- Flowering: August-October
- Field Marks: This grass has very pointed, 1-flowered spikelets, leaves up to 1 inch wide, and a dark olive-green band at the nodes.
- Habitat: Sloughs, swales, marshes, swamps, wet woodlands, floodplain forests, wet ditches, along streams, around ponds and lakes.
- Habit: Coarse annual grass with fibrous roots, often creeping or sprawling, rooting at the nodes.
- Stems: Sprawling to ascending, rooting at the nodes, smooth, up to 3 feet long; nodes with a broad olive-green band.
- Leaves: Elongated, up to 14 inches long, up to 1 inch wide, smooth except for the usually roughened margins; sheaths smooth.
- Flowers: Borne in spikelets, with many spikelets arranged in panicles; panicles up to 15 inches long, the branches spreading or ascending.
- Spikelets: 1-flowered, appressed to the branchlets, long-pointed, up to 1/5 inch long, on a short stalk.
- Stamens: 3.
- Pistils: Ovary superior.
- Grains: Obovoid, purplish.
- Notes: This species is sometimes called Panicum gymnocarpon.
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