Lolium perenne L.
perennial ryegrass
Perennials, forming loose to dense, dark green tufts (10)-20-75 cm; branching intravaginal, leaf-blade folded when young. Leaf-sheath glabrous, often pinkish at first, later light to dark brown and shredding into fibres. Auricles inconspicuous or 0. Ligule 0.5-1-(2) mm, truncate, glabrous. Leaf-blade (3)-6-20-(28) cm × 1.5-4-(5) mm, abaxially glabrous and shining, adaxially smooth or scaberulous, long-narrowed or abruptly narrowed to acute tip; margins scaberulous or smooth. Culm 10-50 cm, erect or spreading or decumbent, internodes glabrous. Spikes (4)-10-28 cm, erect or curved; rachis 0.5-1.2 mm wide, smooth, or scab-erulous on angles. Spikelets 6-15 mm, (2)-5-9-(11)-flowered, green or purplish, overlapping, or more than their own length apart; sometimes proliferous. Upper glume usually < to ≥ spikelet, 5-7-nerved, narrow-lanceolate, subobtuse, glabrous. Lemma (4.5)-5-7-(8.5) mm, 5-nerved, oblong-lanceolate, obtuse to acute, smooth and firm below, scaberulous near margins and hyaline apex, not turgid at maturity, muticous, or occasionally minutely (to 1 mm) awned. Palea = lemma, keels scabrid. Anthers (1.5)-2.5-4 mm. Caryopsis 2-4 × 0.7-1.5 mm. Plate 2A.
N.; S.: common throughout; St.: scattered, and on islands offshore; K., Three Kings Is, Ch., C. Roadsides and tracks, pasture, river flats and banks, waste land and sand dunes; lowland to montane.
Naturalised.
An important pasture grass, commonly the main grass component of permanent pastures in New Zealand, indigenous to Europe, Asia and northern Africa, now widespread throughout temperate regions of both Hemispheres.
Aberrant or abnormal forms are common in L. perenne and plants with branched spikelets also occur; plants with branched inflorescences are probably hybrids with tall fescue, Schedonorus phoenix × Lolium perenne.
