Gaudinia

Gaudinia is a genus of herbaceous plants in the Poaceae family. It is native to the Mediterranean and the Azores.

Description

They are annual plants. Leaves with sheaths with free margins; ligule short, truncate, membranous; flat blade. Spiciform inflorescence, generally loose, distichus, with excavated rachis, disarticulating above the spikelets when ripe. Seated spikelets, generally solitary, longer than the rachis segments, with 2-8 hermaphroditic flowers and not articulated with the rachilla. glumes shorter than the flowers, with well marked nerves; the lower one with 1-5 nerves; the upper one with 4-11 nerves. glabrous rachilla. Lemma lanceolate, papyraceous, with a membranous margin and 7-9 nerves, acute or bidentate, mutic or with a more or less twisted dorsal ridge. Palea shorter than the lemma, with 2 keels, bidentate. Biobed lodicules. Ovary with hirsute apex. Fusiform caryopsis, slightly furrowed, appendiculate. Point thread.

Taxonomy

The genus was described by Ambroise Marie François Joseph Palisot de Beauvois and published in Essai d'une Nouvelle Agrostographie 95, 164. 1812. The type species is: Gaudinia fragilis

Etymology

The genus was named after Jean François Aimée Gottlieb Philippe Gaudin (1776–1833), a Swiss priest and honorary professor of botany at Lausanne.

Cytology

Base number of the chromosome, x = 7. 2n = 14 (y 14 +1). 2 ploidy. "Large" chromosomes.

Species