短轴雀麦 duan zhou que mai

Annual. Culms loosely tufted with basal branches, erect or geniculately ascending, ca. 10 cm tall, glabrous. Leaf sheaths sparsely pubescent; leaf blades flat, 3–4 cm × ca. 2 mm, both surfaces densely pubescent; ligule ca. 1 mm. Panicle contracted, ca. 3 cm, with few spikelets; pedicels short, minutely pubescent. Spikelets ca. 10 × 4 mm, florets 5–8; glumes with membranous margins, apex acuminate, lower glume ca. 4 mm, 3-veined, upper glume 4–5 mm, 5-veined; lemmas broadly elliptic, 4–5 × 3–4 mm in side view, 7-veined, smooth or scabrid, margins membranous, ciliate, apex 2-toothed, teeth ca. 0.5 mm, awned from sinus; awn 4–7 mm, recurved at maturity; palea 4–5 mm, keels sparsely ciliate. Anthers ca. 1 mm. Fl. and fr. Jul–Sep.

Riversides, grassy places; ca. 1000 m. Gansu [Afghanistan; SW Asia, Europe].

The treatment here is doubtful and is probably based on a misidentification of Bromus pseudobrachystachys H. Scholz (Bot. Jahrb. Syst. 91: 462. 1972), recorded from Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Turkey. Bromus brachystachys is a little-known species described from Germany.