Barnyardgrass (Echinochloa crus-galli)

Barnyardgrass (Echinochloa crus-galli) is a species of plant in the Poaceae, herbaceous, mostly erect stem, up to 1.5 m high, ribbon leaves often purplish at base. Most stems are erect but some will spread over the ground, producing up to 40,000 seeds per year.

E. crus-galli has stems erect to stooped, tall, often thin and branched at the base. The leaves are ribbon-shaped, flat, glabrous, 30-50 cm long, 1-2 cm wide, scaly and slightly thickened at the edges. The sheath is smooth and often reddish.

Panicle 8-30 cm long, green or purple, prominent, slightly nodding, tightly branched, 5 cm long and erect. The spines are 3-4 mm long, densely arranged on the branches, ovate, often long-stemmed, pale green to dull purple and short hairs along the veins.

Racemes spreading, 10 cm long and sometimes branched. The glume and lower lemma are finely haired on the surface with stiffer hairs in the veins.

The first glume is about two-fifths along the spikelet, deltoid, the second glume is along the spikelet, short-awned. The sterile lemma is webbed with straight scabrous awns, 2-4 cm long or without awn. The lemma is fertile ovate-elliptic, pointed, pale yellow, shiny, smooth, 3-3.5 mm long.

Kingdom: Plantae
Phylum: Tracheophyta
Subphylum: Angiospermae
Class: Liliopsida
Order: Poales
Family: Poaceae
Subfamily: Panicoideae
Tribe: Paniceae
Subtribe: Boivinellinae
Genus: Echinochloa
Species: Echinochloa crus-galli
Subspecies: Echinochloa crus-galli ssp. spiralis
Varieties: Echinochloa crus-galli var. crus-galli

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Alang-alang or cogon grass ( Imperata cylindrica ) is a plant species in Poaceae, annual grass, sharp leaf, long buds and scaly, creeping under the ground, very adaptive and grows in all climates which often become weeds on agricultural land. I. cylindrica has a sharp pointed tip of the bud and emerges from the ground, height of 0.2-1.5 m but in other places it may be more, short stems, rising up to the ground and flowering white or purplish, often with wreath of hair under the segment. Leaf strands in the form of long ribbons, lancet-tipped with a narrow base and gutter-shaped, 12-80 cm long, very coarse edge and jagged sharply, long hair at the base with broad, pale leaf bones in the middle. The flowers are panicles, 6-28 cm long with long-haired and white-colored ears for 1 cm which are used as a tool to blow off the fruit when ripe. Cogon grass breeds quickly with seeds that spread quickly with the wind or through rhizomes that quickly penetrate the soil. Alang-alang does...

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