. Common plants of longleaf pine-bluestem range. Plant ecology; Grasses; Forage plants. BEARDED SKELETONGRASS Gymnopogon ambiguus (Michx.) BSP. Bearded skeletongrass, though seldom abundant, is conspicuous in sandy pinelands in the South. Distinctive features include short, broad, stiff leaves and an inflorescence of many stiff, slender, diver- gent spikes scattered along the upper part of the flower stalk. At maturity, the seedstalk easily breaks below the lowermost spike, the entire inflo- rescence becoming a "; Plants spread by short rhizomes to form small clumps. Basal
. Common plants of longleaf pine-bluestem range. Plant ecology; Grasses; Forage plants. BEARDED SKELETONGRASS Gymnopogon ambiguus (Michx.) BSP. Bearded skeletongrass, though seldom abundant, is conspicuous in sandy pinelands in the South. Distinctive features include short, broad, stiff leaves and an inflorescence of many stiff, slender, diver- gent spikes scattered along the upper part of the flower stalk. At maturity, the seedstalk easily breaks below the lowermost spike, the entire inflo- rescence becoming a "; Plants spread by short rhizomes to form small clumps. Basal foliage is scant; leaves are mostly crowded along the rigid stalks, which are 1 to 2 feet tall at matur- ity. Although slim skeletongrass, G. brevijolius Trin., is sometimes associated with bearded skeletongrass, it usually occupies wetter soils. It is distinguishable by its spikes, which have flowers only on the outer half; spikes of bearded skeletongrass bear flowers throughout their length. Bearded skeletongrass rarely yields significant amounts of forage. Cattle apparently eat it, for plants are scarce on grazed range. The clumps are poorly anchored in the soil; thus cattle probably uproot many plants. Deer sometimes paw the rhi- zomes out of the soil in winter when better food is scarce. Range: Texas to Florida, north to Kansas, Ohio, and New Jersey. Perennial. Culms 30-60 cm. tall from short, scaly rhi- zomes, erect or decumbent at the base; sheaths crowded, overlapping with a villous ring at the summit, otherwise glabrous; ligule membranous; blades spreading, 5-15 cm. long, 5-14 mm. wide, flat, firm, cordate-lanceolate, glabrous with scabrous margins; inflorescence of numerous unbranched purplish spikes 10-20 cm. long; spikelets 4-6 mm. long ex- cluding the 6-mm. awn, arranged the full length of the branch on two sides of a three-sided Floret 2mm Spikelet 25cm / // 1 Habit Bearded skeletongrass 33. Please note that these images are extracted from scanned page i
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Keywords: ., boo, bookcentury1900, booksubjectforageplants, booksubjectgrasses
