| Author | (Gattinger) Lamson-Scribner | |
| Distribution | Confirmed for the northeastern Piedmont only. A specimen from Ashe County (at NCSC) is misidentified; a specimen from Macon County (at UTC) is from a grass class at Highlands Biological Station and unlikely to have been collected locally. The report from Henderson County needs vetting.
Southern Que. to ND, south to northern FL and TX. | |
| Abundance | Very rare. Though the NCNHP database contains 12 records, only 4 seem to be extant, and just two -- both in the Butner area of Granville County, are in good or excellent condition. This is a State Threatened species, and the S1 rank is justified. | |
| Habitat | Dry mafic soils of open to lightly wooded glades and barrens. |
| Phenology | Flowering and fruiting July-October. | |
| Identification | Wiry Panicgrass belongs to the notoriously difficult P. philadelphicum group. It differs primarily in its longer, more tapering spikelets (3-3.6 mm long vs. 1.8-2.5 mm long in other species). | |
| Taxonomic Comments | See also P. philadelphicum and its subspecies.
The genus Panicum in the broad sense was once very large, but with the split of Dichanthelium in the 1980s, it has been reduced to manageable size. In more recent decades, other genera have been split off: Coleataenia, Hymenachne, Kellochloa, and Phanopyrum, as examples. All 6 of these genera can be readily told from each other in the field with just a hand lens. For a more detailed discussion, see the introductory paragraphs in Weakley (2018). | |
| Other Common Name(s) | Wiry Witchgrass | |
| State Rank | S1 | |
| Global Rank | G5 | |
| State Status | T | |
| US Status | | |
| USACE-agcp | FAC link |
| USACE-emp | FACU link |
