Family |
Poaceae
Heteranthelium piliferum
(Banks & Sol.) Hochst.
Heteranthelium piliferum (Banks & Sol.) Hochst.
(Exsicc. Pl. Alepp. Kurd. Moss. n° 130; 1843 – Nouvelle Flore du Liban et de la Syrie, vol. 1, Pl. XXXVIII nº 2; 1966)
• Life-form & habit: Annual grass, 10–35 cm tall, delicate and tufted, forming small, lax clumps. Culms slender, erect or geniculate at the base, smooth, glabrous, and often tinged reddish at the nodes.
• Leaves: Leaf blades flat or loosely involute, 2–6 cm long, 1–2 mm wide, green to bluish-green, sparsely pubescent near the margins; ligule short, membranous, truncate or slightly ciliate. Sheaths glabrous, overlapping, the lower often pilose near the collar.
• Inflorescence & flowers: Spike simple, slender, 2–4 cm long, with 3–6 distant spikelets, each sessile on the rachis. Spikelets laterally compressed, 10–15 mm long, containing 3–4 florets, the uppermost sterile. Glumes subequal, narrow, keeled, scabrid along the back, tapering to a fine point. Lemmas with a short awn (1–2 mm) or awnless, often pilose near the keel; palea shorter, membranous. Anthers 3, yellow.
• Fruit: Caryopsis narrowly oblong, 3–4 mm long, pale brown, smooth and glossy at maturity.
• Phenology: Flowers and fruits from March to May.
• Habitat & elevation: Dry stony slopes, open steppe, and field margins on light calcareous or gypsum soils, 400–1 800 m. Often found in semi-arid grasslands and disturbed habitats.
• Lebanese distribution: Recorded by Mouterde from the Beqaa Valley and lower slopes of Mount Lebanon, particularly Dahr el-Baïdar, Ras Baalbeck, and Anjar; locally frequent in dry cereal fields and steppe vegetation.
• Native to: Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Kazakhstan, Kirgizstan, Lebanon-Syria, Pakistan, Palestine, Tadzhikistan, Transcaucasus, Turkmenistan, Türkiye, Uzbekistan (POWO).
• Introduced into: Germany (POWO).
• ⚠️ Taxonomic note: Heteranthelium piliferum is a characteristic Irano-Turanian grass and the only species of its genus, recognised by its distant spikelets, soft pilose lemmas, and delicate, slender habit. Mouterde (1966) noted its abundance in arid steppe and cereal-growing zones of the Beqaa, where it often coexists with Eremopyrum bonaepartis and Aegilops triuncialis. Its isolated systematic position among Triticeae reflects both morphological and cytological distinctness.