Author | (Munro ex Wright) R.D. Webster | |
Distribution | Coastal Plain, Sandhills, and Piedmont. To be expected elsewhere. First collected in NC in Richmond County in 1959.
Native of the West Indies and South America. In N.A. from MD to FL and TX. | |
Abundance | Apparently uncommon, but perhaps overlooked and undercollected. | |
Habitat | Weed in crop fields (corn, cotton, soybeans), barnyards, roadsides, sandy fields, weedy ditches. Also a weed (or planted?) in wildlife food plots. | |
Phenology | Flowering and fruiting July-October. | |
Identification | Broadleaf Signal-grass is annual, with spreading stems that root at nodes. The flowering stems (culms) turn rather erect and produce a terminal inflorescence (and also in upper leaf axils). Inflorescence branches are arranged in 2 ranks, are slender, and look superficially like those of Paspalum, except that the spikelets grow singly along each side of the rachis, never in pairs. Broadleaf Signal-grass shows obvious cross-veins on upper portions of 2nd glumes, a feature absent in the very similar Browntop Millet. | |
Taxonomic Comments | Species in the genus Urochloa have in the past been placed in Brachiaria and Panicum. | |
Other Common Name(s) | | |
State Rank | SE? * | |
Global Rank | G5 | |
State Status | | |
US Status | | |
USACE-agcp | FAC link |
USACE-emp | FAC link |