Acrachne racemosa

Tilcayo Cats original · Plants · Sources and editorial assessment · Originals retention rule

Acrachne racemosa is an annual grass in the family Poaceae. Its native range extends across tropical and subtropical parts of Africa and Asia to northern Australia. Kew accepts the name and includes Acrachne verticillata among its synonyms.

Appearance

The Australian grass flora describes a tufted plant with stems that may rise from a bent base or lie partly along the ground. Its flat, narrow leaf blades taper to fine points. At the junction of blade and sheath is a small membrane with a fringe of hairs, called the ligule.

The flowering branches form a cluster resembling fingers or occur at intervals along a central stem. Flora of China describes closely overlapping spikelets, each containing six to twenty small flowers. The scales around the flowers end in short, stiff points, giving the spikelets a toothed outline. Mature grains are dark and finely roughened.

Habitat and seasonal growth

Flora of China records the grass beside fields and rivers in Hainan and Yunnan, at elevations of about three hundred to nine hundred metres. In that regional account it flowers and fruits in autumn and is used as forage.

The regional descriptions give different height ranges: eight to fifty centimetres in Flora of China and fifteen centimetres to one metre in AusGrass. These describe the material covered by each flora and should not be read as a single fixed mature height.