Morphological, Anatomical, and Taxonomic Studies in Anomochloa and Streptochaeta (Poaceae: Bambusoideae)
SMITHSONIAN CONTRIBUTIONS TO BOTANY NUMBER 68 Morphological, Anatomical, and Taxonomic Studies in Anomochloa and Streptochaeta (Poaceae: Bambusoideae) Emmet J. Judziewicz and Thomas R. Soderstrom SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION PRESS Washington, D.C. 1989 ABSTRACT Judziewicz, Emmet J., and Thomas R. Soderstrom. Morphological, Anatomical, and Taxonomic Studies in Anomochloa and Streptochaeta (Poaceae: Bambusoideae). Smithsonian Contributions to Botany, number 68,52 pages, 24 figures, 1 table, 1989.-Although resembling the core group of the bambusoid grasses in many features of leaf anatomy, the Neotropical rainforest grass genera Anomochloa and Streptochaeta share characters that are unusual in the subfamily: lack of ligules, exceptionally long microhairs with an unusual morphology, a distinctive leaf blade midrib structure, and 5-nerved coleoptiles. Both genera also possess inflorescences that are difficult to interpret in conventional agrostological terms. Anomochloa is monotypic, and A. marantoidea, described in 1851 by Adolphe Brongniart from cultivated material of uncertain provenance, was rediscovered in 1976 in the wet forests of coastal Bahia, Brazil. The inflorescence terminates in a spikelet and bears along its rachis several scorpioid cyme-like partial inflorescences. Each axis of a partial inflorescence is subtended by a keeled bract and bears as its first appendages two tiny, unvascularized bracteoles attached at slightly different levels. The spikelets are composed of an axis that bears two bracts and terminates in a flower. The lower, chlorophyllous, deciduous spikelet bract is separated from the coriaceous, persistent, corniculate upper bract by a cylindrical, indurate internode. The flower consists of a low membrane surmounted by a dense ring of brown cilia (perigonate annulus) surrounding the andrecium of four stamens, and an ovary bearing a single hispid stigma.
[Show full text]