Virginia wildrye (Nash Prairie Plants List)

Virginia wildrye

Elymus virginicus

Summary ⁶

Elymus virginicus, or Virginia wildrye, is a perennial bunchgrass located in Virginia and the eastern United States. Virginia wild rye is one of the few cool season native grasses found in the east Texas area.It is extremely palatable to livestock and will decrease without proper grazing management.It spreads via seed and tillering. It can be confused with Canadian wild rye which is a more robust plant with longer awns. It should be cut early in the...

Description ⁷

This perennial grass produces both infertile and fertile shoots. Infertile shoots are up to 1' tall and semi-evergreen; they occur throughout the year, consisting of tufts of low leaves. During the spring and summer, fertile shoots develop, consisting of tufts of tall leafy culms about 2½–4' tall that are deciduous. These culms are terete, light green to reddish brown, glabrous, and erect. Several alternate leaves occur along the entire length of each culm. The blades of these leaves are up to 15 mm. across and 12" long; they are medium green, dark green, or bluish green, hairless on both their upper and lower sides, and rather floppy. The bases of these blades are narrowly auricled (with narrow ear-like lobes); these auricles clasp the culms. The leaf sheaths are light green, medium green, yellowish green, or reddish green; they are open toward their apices, hairless to sparsely short-pubescent, longitudinally veined, and often membranous along their margins. The ligules are white-membranous. Each fertile culm terminates in an erect floral spike (or spike-like raceme) about 2½–6" long; this inflorescence is densely covered on all sides with ascending spikelets that are sessile, or nearly so. Often, the floral spike is partially enclosed or barely exerted from the uppermost leaf. Each spikelet has a pair of glumes and a cluster of 2-4 lemmas. The glumes are linear-lanceolate, 8-15 mm. in length (excluding their awns), and 1.0–2.5 mm. across near their bases; their straight awns are about ½–1" (10-25 mm.) long. The lemmas are 6-10 mm. in length (excluding their awns) and their straight awns are 6-30 mm. long. When upper lemmas are present in a spikelet, they are a little smaller in size than the lower lemmas and often sterile. The outer surfaces of individual glumes are convex, 3-5 veined, and glabrous, scabrous (rough-textured from minute stiff hairs), or finely short-pubescent. The outer surfaces of individual lemmas are convex, 5-7 veined, and glabrous to finely short-pubescent. The florets of fertile lemmas have 2 stigmas and 3 white or pale yellow anthers. The blooming period occurs during the summer, lasting 1-2 weeks for a colony of plants. The florets are cross-pollinated by the wind. Afterwards, the floral spikes become tan-colored and the leaves of fertile shoots begin to wither away. The florets are replaced by long grains with adherent pericarps (one grain per fertile lemma). The root system is fibrous. This grass can tiller at the base, forming clonal offsets from the root system. Cultivation

Sources and Credits

(c) Sam Kieschnick, some rights reserved (CC BY), uploaded by Sam Kieschnick
(c) Matt Lavin, some rights reserved (CC BY-SA), https://www.flickr.com/photos/plant_diversity/20829509298/
(c) Matt Lavin, some rights reserved (CC BY-SA), https://www.flickr.com/photos/plant_diversity/21017364875/
(c) plerd, some rights reserved (CC BY), https://www.flickr.com/photos/96630302@N08/9072306134/
(c) Mike Fenoglio, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC), uploaded by Mike Fenoglio
Adapted by Amber Leung from a work by (c) Wikipedia, some rights reserved (CC BY-SA), http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elymus_virginicus
(c) John Hilty, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC), http://eol.org/data_objects/29448841

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Family	Poaceae

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