Lachnagrostis billardierei subsp. billardierei

Features

Stiffly tufted, glaucous to bluish-green perennial grass, 100-600 mm tall, with capillary-branched panicles sometimes overtopped by leaves. Branching intravaginal. Leaf-sheath papery, with wide membranous margins, closely striate, smooth but sometimes scaberulous above on nerves, light brown to amber. Ligule 1.0-4.5 mm, tapered above, entire to erose, undersides scabrid. Leaf-blade 50-240 x 2.5-10.0 mm, flat, harsh, scaberulous on ribs and on margins throughout, more or less abruptly narrowed to firm, more or less blunt, more or less cucullate apex. Culm 40-400 mm, erect, or decumbent at base, included within uppermost leaf-sheath, internodes densely finely scabrid. Panicle 60-240 x 100-240 mm, purple-green to wine-red, lax, with long, whorled, ascending branches, later spreading and panicle becoming as broad as long; rachis and branches scaberulous, spikelets single at tips of ultimate panicle branchlets, on pedicels thickened above. Spikelets 4-6 mm, pale green, purple-green or red-green. Glumes 1-3-nerved, narrow-lanceolate, acuminate, usually smooth, sometimes sparsely scabrid, margins wide, hyaline, mid-nerve scabrid. Lemma 3-4 mm, more or less two-thirds length of glumes, smooth, or often scabrid above (especially on nerves), membranous, shining, elliptic-lanceolate, lateral nerves excurrent to short awns 0.5-1.0 mm long; central awn 4.5-9.0 mm, fine, geniculate from lower third of lemma 9rarely middorsal). Callus hairs more or less dense, very short, 0.3-0.7 mm, c. one-tenth length of lemma. Rachilla prolongation 0.5-1.0 mm, tipped by a thick tuft of hairs 1.0-1.5 mm and more or less equivalent in length to palea. Lodicules slightly > 0.5 mm, lanceolate, acute. Anthers 0.5-1.0 mm. Seed 1.3-1.8 x 0.5-0.8 mm.