Eleusine africana kenn.-o'byrne Hilu & De Wet

Millet d'Afrique (fr), Éleusine d'Afrique (fr), Crételle d'Afrique (fr)

Species

Angiosperms > Poales > Poaceae > Eleusine

Characteristics

A herb. It is an annual grass that forms tussocks. It grows 1 m tall. The leaves are mostly near the base. The leaf blades are 5-35 cm long by 3-6 mm wide. The flower is made up of 3-17 finger like racemes. They are 4-17 cm long. The spikelets have fertile 309 fertile flowers. The seeds are 1.2-1.6 mm long and black.
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Caespitose annual; culms robust, up to 100 cm tall, erect or geniculately ascending, often branching from the lower nodes; ligule with a definite ciliate fringe; leaf laminas 5–35 cm × 3–6 mm, usually folded.
Spikelets 4.6–7.8 mm long, elliptic; glumes acute, the inferior 2–3.2(3.9) mm long, often 2–3-nerved, the superior 3–4.7 mm long; lemmas 3.7–4.9 mm long, lanceolate in profile, acute to subacute.
Caryopsis 1.2–1.6 mm long, oblong to broadly oblong, the surface uniformly granular and obliquely ridged.
Racemes 3–17, 3.5–15.5 cm × 4–7 mm.
Life form annual
Growth form herb
Growth support -
Foliage retention deciduous
Sexuality hermaphrodite
Pollination -
Spread -
Mature width (meter) -
Mature height (meter) 1.0
Root system -
Rooting depth (meter) -
Root diameter (meter) -
Flower color -
Blooming months -
Fruit color -
Fruiting months -
Nitrogen fixer -
Photosynthetic pathway -

Environment

It is a tropical plant. It grows in dry soils. It grows between 330-2,400 m above sea level. It can grow in arid places. It can be in damp sandy soils near rivers. In Zimbabwe it grows between 1,490-1,910 m above sea level. It germinates best at temperatures of 23°C.
Light -
Soil humidity -
Soil texture -
Soil acidity -
Soil nutriment -
Hardiness (USDA) 9-12

Usage

Caution: It can contain prussic acid.
Uses animal food food gene source
Edible seeds
Therapeutic use -
Human toxicity -
Animal toxicity -

Cultivation

Plants can be grown from seeds.
Mode seedlings
Germination duration (days) -
Germination temperacture (C°) -
Germination luminosity -
Germination treatment -
Minimum temperature (C°) -
Optimum temperature (C°) -
Size -
Vigor -
Productivity -

Distribution

Eleusine africana kenn.-o'byrne world distribution map, present in Angola, Burkina Faso, Botswana, Comoros, Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Ghana, Gambia, Guinea-Bissau, Italy, Kenya, Lesotho, Madagascar, Mali, Mozambique, Namibia, Nigeria, Oman, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Senegal, Singapore, Sierra Leone, Somalia, eSwatini, Chad, Togo, Tanzania, United Republic of, Uganda, Yemen, Zambia, and Zimbabwe

Identifiers

LSID urn:lsid:ipni.org:names:399924-1
WFO ID wfo-0000865667
COL ID 6F4HK
BDTFX ID 23768
INPN ID 95954
Wikipedia (EN)
Wikipedia (FR)

Synonyms

Eleusine africana kenn.-o'byrne Eleusine coracana subsp. africana (kenn.-o'byrne) Eleusine indica subsp. africana (kenn.-o'byrne)