Flora of New Zealand Series

Japanese millet

Robust, erect, light green annuals. Leaf-sheath light green to pale creamy brown, chartaceous, glabrous, rather loosely enfolding culm, slightly keeled above, finely striate. Ligule 0; ligular area glabrous. Leaf-blade (13)-17-30 cm × 10-16 mm, chartaceous, flat, linear, smooth, or adaxially rarely slightly scabrid on primary lateral ribs, midrib whitish, very distinct; margins whitish, slightly thickened, finely scabrid, tapering to subacute tip. Culm (35)-40-60 cm, stout, internodes glabrous. Panicle 6.5-12 cm, erect, very dense, usually with numerous close-set, sessile, often subverticillate racemes; rachis angular, ridged, scabrid, with a dense ring of bristle-like hairs at base and at nodes. Racemes 1.5-3-(4) cm, of many small dense clusters of spikelets; pedicels finely scabrid, < 1 mm. Spikelets 3-4 mm, purplish, sometimes whitish green, broadly ovate to subglobose, subacute. Glumes quite unequal, firmly membranous, 5-nerved, nerves scabrid, internerves usually finely scabrid-pubescent; lower 1-1.5 mm, enwrapping base of spikelet, upper 2.5-3.5 mm, ≈ spikelet, reflexed at maturity exposing upper part of ripening ⚥ floret. Lower floret: lemma similar to upper glume, c. 3 mm, 7-nerved, rotund-ovate, shortly acuminate or shortly cuspidate, nerves scabrid to hispid, internerves minutely scabrid-pubescent; palea < lemma, hyaline, keels minutely scabrid near apex. Upper floret: lemma c. 3 mm, broadly elliptic to rotundate, very convex, crustaceous, obscurely 5-nerved, glabrous, shining, with a minute herbaceous cusp; palea c. 2.5 mm; anthers 0.8-1 mm, yellowish brown to blackish; caryopsis c. 1.5 × 1.5 mm, orbicular, very turgid, yellowish or brownish.

N.: scattered throughout; S.: Nelson City, Blenheim, Christchurch; K. Stony waste land, coastal sands, roadsides (mostly from seed spillages), crops.

Naturalised.

Japanese millet is considered to have originated in eastern Asia and Japan; it has often been confused with E. frumentacea of India.

Ohwi, J. and Yabuno, T. in Ohwi, J. Acta Phytotax. Geobot. 20: 50 (1962) distinguished Japanese millet from E. frumentacea calling it E. utilis, but Scholz, H. Taxon 41: 522-523 (1992), observing that Ohwi and Yabuno had overlooked an earlier synonym Panicum esculentum A.Braun (1861), made the combination E. esculentum.