''Hackelochloa granularis'', the pitscale grass, is a species of

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 ...

native to

sub-Saharan Africa Sub-Saharan Africa is, geographically, the area and regions of the continent of Africa that lies south of the Sahara. These include West Africa, East Africa, Central Africa, and Southern Africa. Geopolitically, in addition to the List of sov ...

and temperate and tropical regions of Asia. It is

naturalised Naturalization (or naturalisation) is the legal act or process by which a non-citizen of a country may acquire citizenship or nationality of that country. It may be done automatically by a statute, i.e., without any effort on the part of the i ...

to the southern United States, Mexico and South America.

Characteristics

''Hackelochloa granularis'' is an

annual plant An annual plant is a plant that completes its life cycle, from germination to the production of seeds, within one growing season, and then dies. The length of growing seasons and period in which they take place vary according to geographical ...

. The stems grow to 5–100 cm in length and have bearded nodes. The leaf sheaths are loose with hairs growing from

tubercle In anatomy, a tubercle (literally 'small tuber', Latin for 'lump') is any round nodule, small eminence, or warty outgrowth found on external or internal organs of a plant or an animal. In plants A tubercle is generally a wart-like projection ...

s. The leaves are 2–5 cm in length and 4–12 mm wide with hairs on the surface and ciliate around the edges. The leaves range from straight to lance shaped.

References

Panicoideae Grasses of Africa Grasses of Asia Flora of temperate Asia Flora of tropical Asia {{Panicoideae-stub