Gastridium

Gastridium is a genus of herbaceous plants of the Poaceae family. It is native to the Canary Islands, western Europe, and the Mediterranean.

Description

They are annual plants. Leaves with sheaths with free margins; ligule obtuse, dentate, veined, membranous; flat blade. Panicle inflorescence generally dense. Spikelets with 1 hermaphroditic flower, articulated with the rachilla. Glumes longer than the flower, unequal, acute or pointed, sometimes sickle-shaped, uninervated, bellyd, more or less scabrous at the apex. Rachilla slightly elongated above the flower, hirsute. Lemma with 5 nerves and 4 teeth or apical setae, muticus or awned, membranous. rounded callus Dorsal ridge more or less geniculate. Palea as long as the lemma, with 2 nerves, bidentate. Entire lodicules. Ovary ellipsoid, glabrous. Furrowed caryopsis. Point thread.

Taxonomy

The genus was described by Ambroise Marie François Joseph Palisot de Beauvois and published in Essai d'une Nouvelle Agrostographie 21, 164. 1812. The type species is: Gastridium australe P. Beauv.

Etymology

The generic name is a diminutive of the Greek gaster = (belly), referring to the swollen basal glumes.

Cytology

Chromosome base number, x = 7. 2n = 28. 2 ploid. "Large" chromosomes.

Accepted species

The following is a list of the species of the genus Gastridium accepted up to July 2011, arranged alphabetically. For each one, the binomial name followed by the author is indicated, abbreviated according to conventions and uses.

• Gastridium phleoides
• Gastridium ventricosum (Gouan) Schinz et Thell.