48. Eragrostis Wolf (love grass)

Plants annual or perennial, with perfect florets or rarely dioecious, sometimes with stolons (short rhizomes often present in E. spectabilis), forming tufts, small clumps, or mats. Flowering stems erect or ascending, sometimes from spreading bases, glabrous or less commonly hairy, sometimes glandular below the nodes. Leaf sheaths glabrous or hairy, especially at the tip, the ligule a line or band of usually short hairs. Leaf blades flat or with inrolled margins, glabrous, roughened, or hairy. Inflorescences open to dense, broad to narrow panicles (sometimes appearing headlike in E. hypnoides), the branches mostly branched again 1 or more times. Spikelets slightly to strongly flattened laterally, with 2 to many florets, disarticulating variously. Glumes usually somewhat unequal in length, shorter than the adjacent lemmas, lanceolate, sharply pointed at the tip, 1(3)‑nerved, glabrous (usually hairy in E. hypnoides). Lemmas lanceolate to ovate, bluntly to more commonly sharply pointed at the tip, 3‑nerved, awnless, rounded on the back or keeled, glabrous (usually hairy along the nerves in E. hypnoides), including the base. Paleas shorter than to more commonly about as long as the lemmas, the 2 nerves sometimes roughened or hairy. Stamens 2 or 3. Fruits oblong to broadly ovate in outline, reddish brown to brown, in a few species with a longitudinal groove on the side opposite the embryo. Two hundred eighty to 350 species, worldwide.

Eragrostis is a large genus in which species determinations can be difficult. Close attention must be paid to details of spikelet morphology. Perennial species may be recognized by the presence of the remains of the previous year’s growth and the production of short, leafy branches from buds located in the basal leaf sheaths. However, some of the perennial species flower during the first year. Most of the species with flat leaf blades develop inrolled margins under droughty conditions or if plants are not pressed soon after they are collected.