Spiderweb Chloris

This is a weedy annual, long present in Africa and America, but spreading in recent times in Asia.

The widely spreading, long-awned, feathery racemes and blunt leaf blades easily distinguish this from the other Chloris species in China.

Annual or short-lived perennial, stoloniferous. Culms erect or geniculately ascending and rooting at lower nodes, 35–60 cm tall. Leaf sheaths keeled, glabrous; leaf blades flat or folded, 3–16 cm, 3–5 mm wide, glabrous, apex obtuse, often mucronulate; ligule 3–4 mm, white ciliate. Racemes digitate or in two close whorls, 7–13, ascending when young, spreading at maturity, 5–9 cm, feathery, purplish; rachis puberulous. Spikelets with 2 florets, 1- or 2-awned; glumes linear-lanceolate, acuminate-mucronate; lower glume 1–1.6 mm; upper glume 2–3.2 mm; lemma of fertile floret narrowly elliptic in side view, 2–3 mm, glabrous, scabrous in upper half, awn 9–25 mm; second floret reduced to a narrow 0.3–0.8 mm rudiment on a filiform rachilla, awn absent or erect, 3–7 mm. Fl. and fr. May–Nov.

Yunnan [India, Myanmar, Sri Lanka; Africa, America, SW Asia].

Sunny open places, roadsides and hillsides; 400–1500 m.

Chloris anomala B. S. Sun & Z. H. Hu.