Australian Tropical Rainforest Plants - Online edition

Centotheca lappacea (L.) Desv.


Grass
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Herbarium specimen. © CSIRO
Family

Desvaux, A.N. (1810) Nouveau Bulletin des Sciences par la Societe Philomatique de Paris : 189.

Stem

Plants growing in clumps but also producing stoloniferous runners and rooting at the nodes.

Leaves

Leaf blades 50-140 x 15-30 mm, venation prominent with many transverse veins, leaf base sometimes asymmetrical. Ligule a fimbriated broad membrane. Leaf sheath with many prominent veins between the main veins.

Flowers

Flowers borne in panicles 20-25 cm long. Lateral branches 4-15 cm long, angular and very thin. Spikelets green, ca. 5 mm long, each spikelet consisting of 2 flowers, each bisexual. Glumes 2.5-4 mm long. Upper glume mucronate, with or without a few rigid reflexed bristles on the marginal veins. Lemma 2-2.5 mm long, lacking an awn. Anthers white, cca. 0.5 mm long. Ovary ca. 0.4 mm long. Styles 2, plumose and white.

Fruit

Fruit ellipsoidal, ca. 1 mm long. Testa smooth and glossy. Endosperm white, granular. Embryo very small.

Seedlings

Features not available.

Distribution and Ecology

Occurs in CYP and NEQ. Altitudinal range from near sea level to 120 m. Grows in rainforest, vineforest, swamp forest and riparian forest. Also from Africa, China and eastern Asia, India, Indo-China, Malesia, and Papuasia.

Synonyms
Cenchrus lappaceus L., Species Plantarum, Edn. 2 1: 1488(1763). Centotheca latifolia (Osbeck) Trin., Fundamenta Agrostographiae : 141(1820).
RFK Code
4163
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