Common name: Sour Grass, Yellow Grass, Hilo Grass, Johnston River Grass
Paspalum conjugatum P.J.Bergius APNI*
Description: Creeping perennials with long leafy stolons rooting at the nodes and forming loose mats.
Culms erect or ascending, to c. 1 m tall; nodes pubescent or glabrous, those of the stolons usually conspicuously pilose. Sheaths hairy on the margins and at the junction with the blade; ligule truncate, c. 1 mm long; blade 5–13 mm wide, glabrous or sparingly hairy, scabrous or stiffly hairy on the margins.
Inflorescence long exserted on a slender peduncle; racemes usually 2, slender, widely divergent, often curved, 4–17 cm long, dense, sessile or subsessile or one of them shortly. Spikelets solitary, in 2 imbricate rows, widely ovate to very widely elliptic, slightly acute, 1.4–2 mm long, 0.9–1.3 mm wide, much compressed. Lower glume absent. Upper glume and lower sterile lemma equal and equalling the spikelet, thin and closely appressed to the fertile floret, margins of glume pappilose-ciliate with fine white hairs, otherwise both glabrous. Fertile lemma c. 1.5 mm long, pale, thinly crustaceous; palea margins membranous, inrolled.
Flowering: Summer.
Distribution and occurrence: North from Murwillumbah on the Tweed River. Native of tropical America. A weed in cultivated and disturbed ground.
NSW subdivisions: *NC
Other Australian states: *Qld
Text by S. W. L. Jacobs, Whalley, R.D.B. & Wheeler, D.J.B. Taxon concept: Grasses of New South Wales, Fourth Edition (2008).
APNI* Provides a link to the Australian Plant Name Index (hosted by the Australian National Botanic Gardens) for comprehensive bibliographic data ***The AVH map option provides a detailed interactive Australia wide distribution map drawn from collections held by all major Australian herbaria participating in the Australian Virtual Herbarium project.
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