Milium effusum

Forest millet ( Milium effusum )

The forest - Millet ( Milium effusum ), also called Soft wood millet or millet, is a flowering plant in the family of grasses ( Poaceae ). It is found in large parts of Eurasia and eastern North America.

• 5.1 Notes and references

Description

Appearance and leaf

The forest - Millet is an overwintering green, perennial herbaceous plant that plant height of about 50 to 100, more rarely reaches up to 120 centimeters. It forms loose clumps with short underground runners that have a yellowish and short haired scaling. Among the lowest leaf sheaths individual renewal sprouts grow upwards. The unbranched, erect stems are slender to moderately thick, smooth and glabrous; in the lower half, they have three to five bare nodes.

The bluish green, bare leaf blades have a length of 10 to 20, rarely up to 30 cm and a width of up to 1.5 inches. They are thin, keeled below and spread flat with faint striations. Nerves and edges feel rough. From the smooth and bare leaf sheaths is the lowest thin and frayed. The membranous, milky white ligule is up to 9 mm long, rounded and slashed at the end.

Inflorescence, flower and fruit

The flowering period is May -July. The 10 to 30 inches long and up to 20 centimeters wide, Rispige inflorescence is in outline ovoid or pyramidal in shape and loosely spread with often somewhat nodding tip. The lateral branches going to a three to six- clusters from the main axis. They are often from far and are at the top slightly bent down, sometimes tortuous something in the upper part. The basal part is smooth and bears no spikelets, the distal part is like the Ährchenstiele rough. The 2.4 to 3.6 millimeters long, grannenlose spikelets is flowered and light green, rarely crowded reddish. The shape of the spikelet is narrow - elliptic to ovate with a tip; the cross-section is round. It has two glumes, which tower above the lemma; the husks are rounded. The smooth and bare caryopsis is broadly elliptical, with a length of about 2 mm in outline.

Ecology

The forest - Millet is an evergreen Hemikryptophyt and a plant with a creeping rhizome and Horst rooted shallow underground runners. Vegetative reproduction occurs by short underground runners.

Ecologically flowers are weak vorweibliche flowers with Windblütigkeit after " Langstaubfädigen type".

The diaspore ( propagation units) are enclosed by the cartilaginous indurated, shiny, unbegrannten deck and palea caryopses. The glumes remain on the plant. The wind propagation takes as an aviator and wind spreader. Probably also occurs ants spread. The caryopses are cold to germinate. Fruit ripening from July / August to October.

Occurrence

The forest - millet is - transpaläarktisch widespread and also occurs in eastern North America - with a large distribution gap in eastern Siberia. In southern Europe lacks only on a majority of the Iberian Peninsula, the Balearic Islands, the Azores, in Greece and Crete. In northern Europe, there are no deposits on Spitsbergen and the Faroe Islands. In the Middle east is the southern boundary of the distribution in Central and East Anatolia and north- western Iran. In Central Asia there partly disjunct distribution extends to the Dzungaria, the Tian Chan and the Pamir - Alai and partly to the Himalaya and the Nan Shan. In East Asia, the forest - millet is found only in the south of Eastern Siberia and also in a disjoint part area in Japan and Korea as well as in Kamchatka, Sakhalin, the Kurile Islands, in the range of Ussuri, Uda and in the Zeya - Bureya level. Also on Taiwan, the forest - Millet to find. In North America, the area extends from the Great Lakes region to the east coast. The western border is located in northeastern South Dakota and Manitoba, the north-eastern border in Newfoundland and Nova Scotia and the southern boundary in Illinois and North Carolina. In New Zealand, the forest millet occurs synanthropic.

In Central Europe the forest millet is common and widespread and missing only on the North Sea islands and on the poorer soils of the north-west German Marsh. In the northwest German lowlands, the resources are already quite scattered.

The forest - millet grows in the subalpine tall herbaceous and shrub vegetation and inhabited demanding, species-rich deciduous and mixed forests. In acidophilous forests, it is rare to find. The floor must be to be weakly acidic fresh to moist, nutrient- rich, loose and fine earthy and neutral. The forest - Millet is a humus pointer and a Mullbodenpflanze that occurs on deep, stony, sandy or pure clay soils. On sandstone and limestone seldom grows only on a large humus layer. It is available in semi-shade or shade. The forest - millet grows preferably in fresh, sophisticated deciduous and mixed forests with rich humus layer in shock bushes and tall herb communities.

The altitudinal distribution ranges in the Alps at altitudes of about 2400 meters.

System

Effusum The first publication of Milium effusum was in 1753 by Linnaeus in Species Plantarum, 1, pp. 61 synonyms for Milium L. are: Agrostis effusa (L.) Lam, Decandolia effusa (L.) bastard, Melica effusa (L. . ) Salisb. , Miliarium effusum (L. ) Moench, Milium confertum L., Milium effusum subsp. alpicola Chrtek, Milium effusum subsp. confertum (L.) K.Richt. , Milium effusum elatius var cooking, Milium effusum var latifrons podp. , Milium effusum var subacaule Jans & Watch., Milium effusum variegatum var Ducommun, Milium transsilvanicum Schur, Paspalum effusum (L. ) Raspail.

From Milium effusum there are at most two subspecies:

• Milium effusum L. subsp. effusum
• Milium effusum subsp. cisatlanticum ( Fernald ) A.Haines: This subspecies seems of A.Haines in Stantec bot Notes, Volume 13, to have been 2010 S. 4 reactivated. It occurs in North America.

Documents

• Gustav Hegi, Hans Joachim Conert (ed.): Illustrated Flora of Central Europe, Pteridophyta / Spermatophyta, Angiospermae: Monocotyledones 1, Vol I Poaceae (true grasses or grasses ), Verlag Paul Parey, Berlin / Hamburg 1998, ISBN 3-8263 - 2868 -X, p 427F.
• Werner Rothmaler: Excursion Flora of Germany, Volume 4 (critical band ), Volk und Wissen Verlag, Berlin 1990.
• Forest millet. In: FloraWeb.de, accessed on September 15, 2011.