Botany Photo of the Day

These are scanned seeds of Hordeum jubatum, commonly known as foxtail barley or squirreltail barley. Lauren Brown, in “Grasses - An Identification Guide”, writes “Considered beautiful by botanists and a noxious weed by ranchers because the bristles pierce animals' tongues and can cause serious injury”. As you might surmise, this grass is listed as a noxious weed in many states and provinces with ranchland.

The long swirling parts are variously awns (bristle-like growths extending from the lemma) or long glumes. The family Poaceae has its own set of inflorescence terminology, illustrated succinctly on this page, though a bit on the small side. A larger, but more diagrammatic version, can be seen here (scroll down to the bottom of the page and click on “spikelets” under Poaceae).

I should mention two other things: 1) the scale at the bottom of the photograph is in millimetres; and 2) this scan was done by Eric La Fountaine, and yes, the seeds were carefully placed.

Botany resource link: In case you missed it in yesterday's comments, Dr. Tom Volk (University of Wisconsin - Lacrosse) has compiled a huge online resource for fungi, including the Fungus of the Month.