Koeleria serpentina

Detailed description

Dark green, red-green to red, diffuse, tufted grass up to 800 mm tall. Leaves narrow, inrolled, overtopped by narrow to somewhat lax, purplish to maroon panicles. branching extravaginal. Leaf-sheath 10–40 mm, softly pubescent, with longer scattered hairs on sheaths of culm-leaves, often also on margins. Ligule 0.4–0.8 mm, erose, minutely ciliate. Leaf-blade 20–160 mm, inrolled, rarely not, < 1 mm diameter, up to 2 mm wide, often with scattered long hairs, undersides smooth or with fine prickle-teeth on ribs; margins minutely prickle-toothed, often with scattered long hairs. Culm 80–460 mm long, slender, internodes with long fine hairs above nodes, and with a small band of shorter hairs below nodes, uppermost node consistently glabrous. Panicle 20–100 × 5–20 mm, narrow-lanceolate to elliptic, sometimes open, with visible rachis and short ascending to spreading branches bearing clustered spikelets; rachises and branches with moderately dense, fine prickle-teeth and often a few longer hairs at lower nodes of rachis and at base of panicle. Spikelets 4–6.5 mm, purple or maroon. Glumes unequal, with sparse short prickle-teeth on keel; lower ⅔–¾ length of upper, oblong-lanceolate, upper < to more or less equivalent in length of spikelet, elliptic-lanceolate; margins with very few minute prickle-teeth near acute to acuminate apex. Lemma 3.0-4.5 mm, bicuspid, minutely-papillose; awn 3–4 mm, usually recurved, insertion point in upper quarter of lemma. Palea minutely prickle-toothed on keels and margins. Callus hairs 0.2 mm. Rachilla hairs to 0.8 mm. Lodicules to 1 mm, glabrous. Anthers to 1.5 mm long. Ovary to 0.8 mm; stigma-styles to 1 mm. Seed not seen.