The Poeae are the largest
tribe
The term tribe is used in many different contexts to refer to a category of human social group. The predominant worldwide usage of the term in English language, English is in the discipline of anthropology. This definition is contested, in p ...
of the
grasses
Poaceae () or Gramineae () is a large and nearly ubiquitous family of monocotyledonous flowering plants commonly known as grasses. It includes the cereal grasses, bamboos and the grasses of natural grassland and species cultivated in lawns and ...
, with around 2,500 species in 121 genera.
[ ] The tribe includes many
lawn
A lawn is an area of soil-covered land planted with grasses and other durable plants such as clover which are maintained at a short height with a lawnmower (or sometimes grazing animals) and used for aesthetic and recreational purposes. L ...
and
pasture
Pasture (from the Latin ''pastus'', past participle of ''pascere'', "to feed") is land used for grazing. Pasture lands in the narrow sense are enclosed tracts of farmland, grazed by domesticated livestock, such as horses, cattle, sheep, or swine ...
grasses.
Taxonomy
Two separate tribes, Poeae and Aveneae, used to be distinguished based on morphology, but phylogenetic analysis showed that they are intermingled. Poeae now includes the former Aveneae. Phylogenetic analyses identified two lineages based on
chloroplast genome
Chloroplast DNA (cpDNA) is the DNA located in chloroplasts, which are photosynthetic organelles located within the cells of some eukaryotic organisms. Chloroplasts, like other types of plastid, contain a genome separate from that in the cell Cel ...
s. The genera are classified in 25 subtribes.
Reticulate evolution
Reticulate evolution, or network evolution is the origination of a lineage through the partial merging of two ancestor lineages, leading to relationships better described by a phylogenetic network than a bifurcating tree. Reticulate patterns ca ...
occurred repeatedly in the tribe.
Chloroplast group 1
Chloroplast group 2
References
External links
*Commons category-inline, Poeae
Poaceae tribes
Taxa named by Robert Brown (botanist, born 1773)
{{Pooideae-stub