''Alloteropsis semialata'', known commonly as black seed grass, cockatoo grass, ''donkersaad gras'', ''swartsaadgras'', ''tweevingergras'', and ''isi quinti'', is a
perennial
A perennial plant or simply perennial is a plant that lives more than two years. The term ('' per-'' + '' -ennial'', "through the years") is often used to differentiate a plant from shorter-lived annuals and biennials. The term is also wide ...
grass
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 an ...
distributed across much of
tropical
The tropics are the regions of Earth surrounding the Equator. They are defined in latitude by the Tropic of Cancer in the Northern Hemisphere at N and the Tropic of Capricorn in
the Southern Hemisphere at S. The tropics are also referred to ...
and
subtropical
The subtropical zones or subtropics are geographical zone, geographical and Köppen climate classification, climate zones to the Northern Hemisphere, north and Southern Hemisphere, south of the tropics. Geographically part of the Geographical z ...
Africa
Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most populous continent, after Asia in both cases. At about 30.3 million km2 (11.7 million square miles) including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of Earth's total surface area ...
,
Asia
Asia (, ) is one of the world's most notable geographical regions, which is either considered a continent in its own right or a subcontinent of Eurasia, which shares the continental landmass of Afro-Eurasia with Africa. Asia covers an area ...
and
Australia
Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a Sovereign state, sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous List of islands of Australia, sma ...
, as well as
Papuasia
Papuasia is a Level 2 botanical region defined in the World Geographical Scheme for Recording Plant Distributions (WGSRPD). It lies in the southwestern Pacific Ocean, in the Melanesia ecoregion of Oceania and Tropical Asia.
It comprises the f ...
and
Madagascar
Madagascar (; mg, Madagasikara, ), officially the Republic of Madagascar ( mg, Repoblikan'i Madagasikara, links=no, ; french: République de Madagascar), is an island country in the Indian Ocean, approximately off the coast of East Africa ...
.
[ The genus name '' Allopteropsis'' comes from the ]Greek
Greek may refer to:
Greece
Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe:
*Greeks, an ethnic group.
*Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family.
**Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...
words "allotrios", meaning "belonging to another", and "opsis", meaning appearance. The specific epithet ''semialata'' comes from the Latin
Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...
"semi" (half) and "ala" (wing), referring to the winged margins of the upper glume
In botany, a glume is a bract (leaf-like structure) below a spikelet in the inflorescence (flower cluster) of grasses (Poaceae) or the flowers of sedges (Cyperaceae). There are two other types of bracts in the spikelets of grasses: the lemma and ...
.
Description
This plant typically reaches 20-150 centimeters tall, growing from a short, white rhizome
In botany and dendrology, a rhizome (; , ) is a modified subterranean plant stem that sends out roots and shoots from its nodes. Rhizomes are also called creeping rootstalks or just rootstalks. Rhizomes develop from axillary buds and grow hori ...
. The leaf blades are typically 10-50 centimeters long and 1-10 millimeters wide. The plant produces 2-flowered fertile spikelets.
Variation
The species has two subspecies
In biological classification, subspecies is a rank below species, used for populations that live in different areas and vary in size, shape, or other physical characteristics (morphology), but that can successfully interbreed. Not all species ...
including ''A. semialata'' subsp. ''semialata'', which uses the C4 photosynthetic pathway, and ''A. semialata'' subsp. ''eckloniana'', which uses the C3 photosynthetic pathway. As the only plant species known to use both pathways, it is an important model for the study of the evolution of photosynthesis. There are a wide range of intermediate phenotypes, including that of C2 photosynthesis
Photorespiration (also known as the oxidative photosynthetic carbon cycle or C2 cycle) refers to a process in plant metabolism where the enzyme RuBisCO oxygenates RuBP, wasting some of the energy produced by photosynthesis. The desired reaction i ...
.
The species has been found in a polyploid
Polyploidy is a condition in which the cells of an organism have more than one pair of ( homologous) chromosomes. Most species whose cells have nuclei ( eukaryotes) are diploid, meaning they have two sets of chromosomes, where each set contain ...
series with diploid
Ploidy () is the number of complete sets of chromosomes in a cell, and hence the number of possible alleles for autosomal and pseudoautosomal genes. Sets of chromosomes refer to the number of maternal and paternal chromosome copies, respectively ...
, tetraploid
Polyploidy is a condition in which the cells of an organism have more than one pair of ( homologous) chromosomes. Most species whose cells have nuclei (eukaryotes) are diploid, meaning they have two sets of chromosomes, where each set contains ...
, hexaploid
Polyploidy is a condition in which the cells of an organism have more than one pair of ( homologous) chromosomes. Most species whose cells have nuclei (eukaryotes) are diploid, meaning they have two sets of chromosomes, where each set contains ...
, octoploid
Polyploidy is a condition in which the cells of an organism have more than one pair of ( homologous) chromosomes. Most species whose cells have nuclei (eukaryotes) are diploid, meaning they have two sets of chromosomes, where each set contains ...
and dodecaploid
Polyploidy is a condition in which the cells of an organism have more than one pair of ( homologous) chromosomes. Most species whose cells have nuclei ( eukaryotes) are diploid, meaning they have two sets of chromosomes, where each set contain ...
individuals. All members of the C3 subspecies are diploid and there are no diploid individuals outside of that subspecies.
Ecology
The seeds of this species are an important component of the wet-season diet of many granivorous finches and parrots. The rhizomes are part of the dry-season diet of some animals.
References
Panicoideae
Flora of Africa
Flora of Asia
{{Panicoideae-stub