genus
Genus ( plural genera ) is a taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of extant taxon, living and fossil organisms as well as Virus classification#ICTV classification, viruses. In the hierarchy of biological classification, genus com ...
of plants in the
grass family
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 ...
, found in many countries on all inhabited continents and many islands.
''Eragrostis'' is commonly known as lovegrass or canegrass. The name of the genus is derived 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 ἔρως (''eros''), meaning "love", and ἄγρωστις (''agrostis''), meaning "grass".
Lovegrass is commonly used as
livestock
Livestock are the domesticated animals raised in an agricultural setting to provide labor and produce diversified products for consumption such as meat, eggs, milk, fur, leather, and wool. The term is sometimes used to refer solely to animals ...
fodder
Fodder (), also called provender (), is any agriculture, agricultural foodstuff used specifically to feed domesticated livestock, such as cattle, domestic rabbit, rabbits, sheep, horses, chickens and pigs. "Fodder" refers particularly to food g ...
. The seeds appear to be of high nutritional value for some animals, but they are also very tiny and collecting them for human food is cumbersome and hence uncommon. A notable exception is
teff
''Eragrostis tef'', also known as teff, Williams lovegrass or annual bunch grass, is an annual grass, a species of lovegrass native to the Horn of Africa, notably to both Eritrea and Ethiopia. It is cultivated for its edible seeds, also known as ...
bread
Bread is a staple food prepared from a dough of flour (usually wheat) and water, usually by baking. Throughout recorded history and around the world, it has been an important part of many cultures' diet. It is one of the oldest human-made f ...
s on the
Horn of Africa
The Horn of Africa (HoA), also known as the Somali Peninsula, is a large peninsula and geopolitical region in East Africa.Robert Stock, ''Africa South of the Sahara, Second Edition: A Geographical Interpretation'', (The Guilford Press; 2004), ...
, such as
Ethiopia
Ethiopia, , om, Itiyoophiyaa, so, Itoobiya, ti, ኢትዮጵያ, Ítiyop'iya, aa, Itiyoppiya officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, is a landlocked country in the Horn of Africa. It shares borders with Eritrea to the ...
n ''
injera
Injera (, ; om, Biddeena; ) is a sour fermented pancake-like flatbread with a slightly spongy texture, traditionally made of teff flour. In Ethiopia, Eritrea, and some parts of Sudan, injera is the staple. Injera is central to the dining proc ...
'' and
Somalia
Somalia, , Osmanya script: 𐒈𐒝𐒑𐒛𐒐𐒘𐒕𐒖; ar, الصومال, aṣ-Ṣūmāl officially the Federal Republic of SomaliaThe ''Federal Republic of Somalia'' is the country's name per Article 1 of thProvisional Constituti ...
n ''
laxoox
Lahoh ( or , ar, لحوح, laḥūḥ, ) ), is a spongy, flat pancake-like bread that originated from Somalia.Mohamed Diriye Abdullahi, ''Culture and Customs of Somalis'', (Greenwood Press: 2001), p. 113. It is a type of flat bread eaten re ...
''. It is a crop of commercial importance. '' E. clelandii'' and '' E. tremula'' are recorded as
famine food
A famine food or poverty food is any inexpensive or readily available food used to nourish people in times of hunger and starvation, whether caused by extreme poverty, such as during economic depression or war, or by natural disasters such as ...
s in
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 ...
and
Chad
Chad (; ar, تشاد , ; french: Tchad, ), officially the Republic of Chad, '; ) is a landlocked country at the crossroads of North and Central Africa. It is bordered by Libya to the north, Sudan to the east, the Central African Republic ...
, respectively.
Other species, such as '' E. amabilis'', are used as
ornamental plant
Ornamental plants or garden plants are plants that are primarily grown for their beauty but also for qualities such as scent or how they shape physical space. Many flowering plants and garden varieties tend to be specially bred cultivars that i ...
hyperaccumulator A hyperaccumulator is a plant capable of growing in soil or water with very high concentrations of metals, absorbing these metals through their roots, and concentrating extremely high levels of metals in their tissues. The metals are concentrated a ...
of
caesium-137
Caesium-137 (), cesium-137 (US), or radiocaesium, is a radioactive isotope of caesium that is formed as one of the more common fission products by the nuclear fission of uranium-235 and other fissionable isotopes in nuclear reactors and nucl ...
and can be grown to remove the highly
toxic
Toxicity is the degree to which a chemical substance or a particular mixture of substances can damage an organism. Toxicity can refer to the effect on a whole organism, such as an animal, bacterium, or plant, as well as the effect on a subst ...
radioactive
Radioactive decay (also known as nuclear decay, radioactivity, radioactive disintegration, or nuclear disintegration) is the process by which an unstable atomic nucleus loses energy by radiation. A material containing unstable nuclei is consid ...
atoms from the environment.
Weeping lovegrass
''Eragrostis curvula'' is a species of grass known by the common name weeping lovegrass. Other common names include Boer lovegrass, curved lovegrass, Catalina lovegrass, and African lovegrass.
It is native to southern Africa. It is an introduced ...
('' E. curvula'') has been planted extensively to prevent
soil erosion
Soil erosion is the denudation or wearing away of the upper layer of soil. It is a form of soil degradation. This natural process is caused by the dynamic activity of erosive agents, that is, water, ice (glaciers), snow, air (wind), plants, and ...
.
Seed dispersal
In Spermatophyte plants, seed dispersal is the movement, spread or transport of seeds away from the parent plant.
Plants have limited mobility and rely upon a variety of dispersal vectors to transport their seeds, including both abiotic vectors, ...
is often done by passing animals; the grains' hooks latch on to fur or hair, or to clothes. Others are wind or gravity dispersed. Several
herbivore
A herbivore is an animal anatomically and physiologically adapted to eating plant material, for example foliage or marine algae, for the main component of its diet. As a result of their plant diet, herbivorous animals typically have mouthpart ...
s feed on lovegrass, including
invertebrate
Invertebrates are a paraphyletic group of animals that neither possess nor develop a vertebral column (commonly known as a ''backbone'' or ''spine''), derived from the notochord. This is a grouping including all animals apart from the chordate ...
s such as the
caterpillar
Caterpillars ( ) are the larval stage of members of the order Lepidoptera (the insect order comprising butterflies and moths).
As with most common names, the application of the word is arbitrary, since the larvae of sawflies (suborder Sym ...
s of the
Zabulon skipper
The Zabulon skipper (''Lon zabulon'') (sometimes called the southern dimorphic skipperJames A. Scott (1986). ''The Butterflies of North America''. Stanford University Press, Stanford, CA. ) is a North American butterfly first described by the ...
(''Poanes zabulon'') and
vertebrate
Vertebrates () comprise all animal taxa within the subphylum Vertebrata () ( chordates with backbones), including all mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, and fish. Vertebrates represent the overwhelming majority of the phylum Chordata, ...
s. The
extinct
Extinction is the termination of a kind of organism or of a group of kinds (taxon), usually a species. The moment of extinction is generally considered to be the death of the last individual of the species, although the capacity to breed and ...
bluebuck
The bluebuck (Afrikaans: bloubok ) or blue antelope (''Hippotragus leucophaeus'') is an extinct species of antelope that lived in South Africa until around 1800. It was smaller than the other two species in its genus ''Hippotragus,'' the roan ...
(''Hippotragus leucophaeus'') was known to graze these grasses. The dense bunches also provide cover for small animals such as the rare
Botteri's sparrow
Botteri's sparrow (''Peucaea botterii'') is a medium-sized sparrow.
This passerine bird is primarily found in Mexico, with a breeding range that extends into the southeastern tip of the U.S. state of Arizona, and a small non-migratory populatio ...
(''Aimophila botterii''). Lovegrasses may be important groundcover on oceanic islands like
Laysan
Laysan (; haw, italics=no, Kauō ), located northwest of Honolulu at , is one of the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands. It comprises one land mass of , about in size. It is an atoll of sorts, although the land completely surrounds a shallow ...
, where other plants are rare.
Taxonomy
''Eragrostis'' is the type genus of the
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 ...
Eragrostideae
Eragrostideae is a tribe of grasses in subfamily Chloridoideae
Chloridoideae is one of the largest subfamilies of grasses, with roughly 150 genera and 1,600 species, mainly found in arid tropical or subtropical grasslands. Within the PACMAD c ...
.
;Formerly included
Many species now considered better suited to other genera, including '' CladoraphisCoelachyrum
Desmazeria
''Desmazeria'' is a genus of Mediterranean plants in the grass family, related to ''Catapodium''.
The genus is named for John Baptiste Henri Joseph Desmazières, (1796-1862) a French merchant, amateur botanist, and editor of scientific journals. ...
Diplachne
''Diplachne'' is a genus of plants in the grass family, widespread over much of the world.Ectrosia
Festuca
''Festuca'' (fescue) is a genus of flowering plants belonging to the grass family Poaceae (subfamily Pooideae). They are evergreen or herbaceous perennial tufted grasses with a height range of and a cosmopolitan distribution, occurring on every ...
Poa
''Poa'' is a genus of about 570 species of grasses, native to the temperate regions of both hemispheres. Common names include meadow-grass (mainly in Europe and Asia), bluegrass (mainly in North America), tussock (some New Zealand species), a ...
'' etc.
Starr 041229-2580 Eragrostis atropioides.jpg, ''
Eragrostis atropioides
''Eragrostis'' is a large and widespread genus of plants in the grass family, found in many countries on all inhabited continents and many islands.
''Eragrostis'' is commonly known as lovegrass or canegrass. The name of the genus is derived fr ...
weeping lovegrass
''Eragrostis curvula'' is a species of grass known by the common name weeping lovegrass. Other common names include Boer lovegrass, curved lovegrass, Catalina lovegrass, and African lovegrass.
It is native to southern Africa. It is an introduced ...
Eragrostis variabilis
''Eragrostis variabilis'' is a species of grass known by the common names variable lovegrass, ''kawelu'', ''emoloa'', and ''kalamalo''. It is endemic to Hawaii, where it occurs on all the main islands plus Kure Atoll, Midway Atoll, Pearl and Herm ...