 Photo ©
Carl Farmer |
Here and there in marshy ground, ditches or shallow water Stems to 1 m high, often much less. Spikelets c 15-35 mm long, lemmas c 5.5-7 mm long. Anthers c 1.5-3 mm long Skye ID: Skye Glyceria species can be told by their long narrow spikelets, typically 10x as long as wide, with the whitish tips of the lemmas giving the alternating green and white effect as seen in the spikelet that nearly reaches the top left corner of the picture on the left. The same pattern is seen in Poa and Festuca spikelets but they do not have such a high ratio of length to breadth. The infloresence branches are mostly single or paired; when paired, the longer generally has 1-4 spikelets and the shorter 1 spikelet. Many branches with 1 spikelet only will be found, especially near the top of the infloresence, usually with a stalk much shorter than the spikelet. The two Skye species are difficult to tell apart. G declinata is like a smaller version of G fluitans, so naturally it's easier to be confident that a large one is fluitans than that a small one is declinata. Generally G fluitans has lemmas over 5.5 mm long, and G declinata under 5.5 mm. G declinata is supposed to have toothed lemma tips while G fluitans does not. This is very difficult to see; essential to separate lemma from palea first, even then toothing or otherwise is very difficult to distinguish from general tattiness, even on young lemmas. The hybrid between the two is very rare, but intermediates seem to be frequent in my experience. Even the one in these pictures has yellow anthers, which according to Sell and Murrell is only found in declinata, but since it has untoothed lemmas that are easily 6 mm long it's clearly fluitans. Other features: Leaves often float on water surface; in early spring a raft of floating leaves is often all that is visible of the plant. Ligules 5-15 mm long, pointed. |
