Puccinellia stricta

Detailed description

Light bluish green or rarely pale yellow-green perennial tufts, 25–650 mm, with stiff culms and leaves, or with finer and less rigid leaves; branching intravaginal. Leaf-sheath smooth, submembranous to subcoriaceous, ± distinctly nerved, light brownish to purplish. Ligule 0.7–2.0 mm, smooth, rounded to truncate, or ± tapered at centre and acute. Leaf-blade 10–120 mm, involute, c. 0.5 mm diameter in rolled state, rigid and erect, or finer and softer, abaxially smooth, adaxially sparsely scabrous on nerves, or sometimes densely scabrous throughout, margins scabrous, narrowed to a fine acute tip. Culm 20–400 mm, enclosed by uppermost leaf-sheaths at flowering, later visible, smooth, erect. Panicle 20–200 × 2–55 mm, at first narrow-linear, racemose above, with few, erect, usually scabrous branches below, later more open with ± spreading branches bare at base. Spikelets 3.5–10.5 mm, 2–10-flowered, narrow, almost terete, light green to purplish. Glumes often quite unequal, elliptic-oblong, margins and sometimes midnerve minutely ciliate near tip; lower glume 0.6–2.3 mm, 1-nerved, subacute to subobtuse; upper glume 1.3–3.5 mm, 3-nerved, subobtuse to obtuse. Lemma 2–4 mm, 5-nerved, broad-elliptic, with very minute hairs at base not usually visible at ×10, and occasionally a few minute hairs on nerves near base, midnerve usually not quite reaching finely ciliate, obtuse tip. Palea slightly < lemma, bifid, keels scabrous in upper ⅔. Rachilla 0.5–1.0 mm. Anthers 0.4–1.0 mm. Seed 1.0–1.8 × 0.4–0.7 mm.