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OPLISMENUS Beauv. Basketgrass
Plants stoloniferous, annual (ours) or perennial. Culms mat forming or geniculate or decumbent, nodes
hirsute; internodes solid or hollow, terete or slightly flattened. Leaves not differentiated into two
kinds (basal rosette absent), cauline, not distinctly distichous; sheaths terete; ligules a ciliate membrane;
blades flat (thin and pseudopetiolate). Panicles of several spicate primary branches; primary
branches spreading with appressed secondary branches, terminating in a spikelet; bristles absent below spikelets.
Spikelets solitary or paired, not embedded in branch, adaxial, dorsiventrally or laterally compressed;
disarticulation below spikelets; florets 2; lower floret sterile, staminate or without stamens; upper
florets fertile, more than three fourths lower floret length; first glumes present, not fused with callus,
not encircling spikelet base, awned; second glumes present, one half to a little more than three fourths
spikelet length, not saccate, 5- or 7-veined (usually awned from slightly bifid apex); lemma of upper
florets indurate, smooth, white or yellow, glabrous, margins involute, mucronate or awnless; palea of upper
florets present. Stamens 3; anthers yellow. Basic chromosome number x=9,10,11.
A genus of about 10 species that are adapted to tropical and warm temperate areas of the world. Davey
and Clayton (1978) reported a numerical analysis of five species.
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