Germainia

Germainia  Bull. Soc. Hist. Nat. Toulouse 7: 344 (1873).

Derivation:. Named after Ernest Germain de St. Pierre, 1815–1882, French botanist and collector of the type specimen of G. capitata.

Syn: Sclerandrium Stapf & C.E.Hubb.

Taxonomic revisions, nomenclatural references:. Chumsi Chaianan, Thai Forest Bull. (Botany) 6: 29–59 (1972).

Key references (keys and floras):. C.A.Gardner, Flora of Western Australia 1 Gramineae 302–303 (1952) as Sclerandrium; E.E.Henty, Manual Grasses New Guinea 105 (1969) and 170 as Sclerandrium; M.Lazarides, Tropical Grasses S.E. Asia 42–43(1980); J.C.Tothill and J.B.Hacker, Grasses of Southern Queensland 250–251 (1983); B.K.Simon, Flora of the Kimberley Region 1176 (1992); B.K.Simon, Key to Australian Grasses 122 (1993); D.Sharp and B.K.Simon, AusGrass (2002).

W.D.Clayton & S.A.Renvoize, Genera Graminum (1986), genus (581).

Native. 8 species, from Asia, Malesia and northern Australia. 3 species in Australia, WA, NT, and Qld. Also New Guinea.

Habit. Annual or perennial, stoloniferous (rarely) or tufted. Leaf blades narrow. Ligule a fringed membrane. Plants monoecious with all fertile spikelets unisexual, male and female-fertile spikelets mixed in inflorescence.

Inflorescence. Inflorescence peduncled, often long-exserted, solitary, capitate to elongate and consisting of few- to many-jointed racemes, a single raceme or spike, digitate (the racemes appressed or divergent), espatheate (but the peduncle sometimes enclosed in the uppermost sheath). Spikelet-bearing axes much reduced (to a peduncle, with two sessile spikelets and a pedicellate one on a short axis) or racemes, with heteromorphic spikelets (the sessile and involucral spikelets awnless, with dissimilar glumes), solitary or paired to clustered (1–2(-6) racemes, fused at their bases), finally disarticulating at joints.

Spikelets. Spikelets 2 flowered, with 1 fertile floret, associated with bractiform involucres (the basal, sessile, homogamous spikelets forming an involucre round the heterogamous pairs), paired, sessile and pedicelled, in pedicelled/sessile combinations; sessile spikelet with lower incomplete floret, or without lower incomplete floret. Fertile spikelets somewhat dorsally compressed (subterete), falling with glumes.

Glumes. Glumes more or less equal, long relative to adjacent lemmas, hairy or hairless, pointed or blunt, awnless, non-keeled, similar (papery, narrow, blunt). Lower glume relatively smooth, 0–5 nerved. Upper glume 0–3 nerved.

Florets. Lower incomplete floret(s) sterile. Lemmas awnless. Palea relatively long, entire or apically notched or deeply bifid, nerveless. Callus pointed or blunt. Stamens 0. Grain small. Hilum short. Embryo large. Pedicels free of rachis. Pedicelled spikelets present, different from sessile spikelet (awned), female, with proximal incomplete florets, 2 floreted, 1 fertile. Lemmas without apical teeth, reduced to the membranous or stipitate awn-base, less firm than glumes, entire at apex, awned, 1, glabrous. Awns 1, apical, geniculate, hairy.

Kranz Anatomy. C4.

2n = 14.

Classification. Panicoideae; Andropogoneae.

Notes. The genus is broadly divisible into three facies, but there are more intermediates than typical species.

Types Species. G. capitata Bal. & Poitr.

Biogeographic Element. Clifford & Simon 1981, Simon & Jacobs 1990: Indo-Malayan.

AVH 2011

Scratchpads developed and conceived by (alphabetical): Ed Baker, Katherine Bouton Alice Heaton Dimitris Koureas, Laurence Livermore, Dave Roberts, Simon Rycroft, Ben Scott, Vince Smith