''Melica kozlovii'' 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 ...

found on mountain slopes in Mongolia and China (

Gansu Gansu (, ; alternately romanized as Kansu) is a province in Northwest China. Its capital and largest city is Lanzhou, in the southeast part of the province. The seventh-largest administrative district by area at , Gansu lies between the Tibet ...

Qinghai Qinghai (; alternately romanized as Tsinghai, Ch'inghai), also known as Kokonor, is a landlocked province in the northwest of the People's Republic of China. It is the fourth largest province of China by area and has the third smallest po ...

Shanxi Shanxi (; ; formerly romanised as Shansi) is a landlocked province of the People's Republic of China and is part of the North China region. The capital and largest city of the province is Taiyuan, while its next most populated prefecture-lev ...

) at above sea level.

Description

The species is

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 ...

loosely tufted with short

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 ...

s. The culms are as tall as and are wide. Sometimes, the culms can be as long as , with the species themselves being caespitose and clumped. Both the leaf-sheaths and

plant stem A stem is one of two main structural axes of a vascular plant, the other being the root. It supports leaves, flowers and fruits, transports water and dissolved substances between the roots and the shoots in the xylem and phloem, stores nutrien ...

is scabrous. The leaf-sheaths are also tubular and are closed on one end. The leaf-blades are flat, wide and have a scaberulous surface. The membrane is truncate just like the leaf-sheaths but is eciliated and long. The

panicle A panicle is a much-branched inflorescence. (softcover ). Some authors distinguish it from a compound spike inflorescence, by requiring that the flowers (and fruit) be pedicellate (having a single stem per flower). The branches of a panicle are of ...

is open, linear, secund, long and carry some spikelets. The main

branch A branch, sometimes called a ramus in botany, is a woody structural member connected to the central trunk (botany), trunk of a tree (or sometimes a shrub). Large branches are known as boughs and small branches are known as twigs. The term '' ...

es carry 1–5 fertile spikelets and are scaberulous. Spikelets are oblong, solitary, are long and have fertile spikelets that are pediceled. The pedicels are pubescent and hairy above. The spikelets have 2-3 fertile

floret This glossary of botanical terms is a list of definitions of terms and concepts relevant to botany and plants in general. Terms of plant morphology are included here as well as at the more specific Glossary of plant morphology and Glossary o ...

s which are diminished at the apex while the sterile florets are barren, cuneate, and clumped. Both the upper and lower

glumes 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 ...

are elliptic, keelless, membranous and have acute apexes. Their size and veines are different though; Lower glume is long with the leaf veins being 3–5 while the upper one is long and is 5–9 veined. The species'

lemma Lemma may refer to: Language and linguistics * Lemma (morphology), the canonical, dictionary or citation form of a word * Lemma (psycholinguistics), a mental abstraction of a word about to be uttered Science and mathematics * Lemma (botany), a ...

have scabrous surface and emarginated apex. Its fertile lemma is coriaceous and is long. Its palea is elliptic, 2 veined, and have puberulous surface. Flowers are fleshy, oblong and truncate. They also grow together, and have 3

anther The stamen (plural ''stamina'' or ''stamens'') is the pollen-producing reproductive organ of a flower. Collectively the stamens form the androecium., p. 10 Morphology and terminology A stamen typically consists of a stalk called the filam ...

s that are long. The

fruit In botany, a fruit is the seed-bearing structure in flowering plants that is formed from the ovary after flowering. Fruits are the means by which flowering plants (also known as angiosperms) disseminate their seeds. Edible fruits in particu ...

s are caryopsis with additional pericarp and linear hilum.

Ecology

Its

flower A flower, sometimes known as a bloom or blossom, is the reproductive structure found in flowering plants (plants of the division Angiospermae). The biological function of a flower is to facilitate reproduction, usually by providing a mechani ...

ing time is from May to August with its fruits being ripe by that time as well.

References

{{Taxonbar, from=Q11110255 kozlovii Grasses of China Flora of Gansu Flora of Qinghai Flora of Shanxi Flora of Mongolia