Vascular Plants of North Carolina
Section: Common Name: Scientific Name: Family:
Account for Philadelphia Panicgrass - Panicum philadelphicum ssp. philadelphicum   Bernhardi ex Trinius
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Section 5 » Family Poaceae
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AuthorBernhardi ex Trinius
DistributionMountains and Piedmont.

N.S. to WI, south to GA and TX.
AbundanceFrequent in the Mountains and Piedmont; very rare in the Coastal Plain.
HabitatSeasonally wet to dry exposed shores of ponds, impoundments, and rivers; outcrops, glades, roadsides. Tends to favor open, treeless sites.
PhenologyFlowering and fruiting July-October.
IdentificationThe Panicum philadelphicum group is characterized by being annual, hairy, much-branched, and rather short (mostly less than 2 feet tall except subspecies gattingeri). The nominate subspecies differs from subspecies gattingeri by stems only half as long, and leaves a maximum of 6 mm wide (vs. up to 12 mm wide).
Taxonomic CommentsIdentification of the subspecies is not often clearcut; always use a combination of characters.

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)None
State Rank[S4]
Global RankG5TNR
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