Aquatic and Wetland Vascular Plants of the Northern Great Plains
Eragrostis Beauv. -- Lovegrass
Low, creeping, mat-forming annuals (those included here), perfect-flowered or dioecious; culms mostly spreading and rooting at the nodes. Leaves mostly in tufts at the nodes, short-sheathing and with rather short, flat to folded blades. Inflorescences usually many, condensed and capitate to somewhat open panicles; spikelets mostly many-flowered, linear to oblong, laterally compressed, the rachilla continuous and remaining intact as the glumes and lemmas fall, the paleas persisting for a short time; glumes unequal, acute to acuminate, (0)1-nerved or the second occasionally 3-nerved; lemmas acute, keeled, prominently 3-nerved; paleas shorter than the lemma, scarious, conspicuously 2-nerved. Two weedy species of lovegrass are worth mentioning for their tendency to appear on dry shores and other previously inundated habitats, especially in dry, sandy or gravelly substrates. Both are typical of disturbed upland habitats like roadsides, fields and waste places. E. pectinacea (Michx.) Nees, Carolina lovegrass, is a tufted, nonstoloniferous grass with open, spreading panicles of narrow, linear, nonglandular spikelets that tend to lie parallel to the panicle branches. E. cilianensis (All.) E. Mosher, stinkgrass, is another tufted annual with more crowded panicles of broader spikelets and with wartlike glands on the keels of the glumes and lemmas, and also on the pedicels.
| Lead | Characteristic | Go To |
| 1 | Plants perfect-flowered; anthers 0.2-0.3 mm long. | E. hypnoides |
| 1 | Plants dioecious; anthers 1.4-2.3 mm long. | E. reptans |
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