Najas gramineaDelile [family HYDROCHARITACEAE ] (stored under name); Najas gramineaRendle [family HYDROCHARITACEAE ] Verified by Richard Max Lowden,
Related name
Najas liberiensis
Najas baldwinii
Najas graminea
Flora
Entry for Najas graminea [family NAJADACEAE]
Herbarium
South African National Biodiversity Institute, Compton Herbarium, Cape Town (SAM)
Collection
Flora of Southern Africa
Resource Type
Reference Sources
Entry From
Flora of South Africa, (2003) Author: Dr J.P. Roux
Names
Najas graminea [family NAJADACEAE]
Information
Small, unarmed plants with much branched shoots, 10-60 cm long, often plumose above because of the closely packed leaves. Roots many, long, filiform, with a dense covering of long root-hairs towards the tip. Stems with terete, brittle internodes, 1 mm in diam. Leaves 16-25 mm long, 0-5-6 mm wide, teeth microscopic, about 40-55 on each side; sheaths with linear-setaceous auricles about 1-5 mm long, bearing some minute teeth. Flowers monoecious. Male flowers solitary, in upper leaf axils, naked; pedicel at anthesis 1 mm long, anther 1 mm long, oblong, apically with 2 small obtuse ridges. Female flowers usually in lower axils, sessile, about 1 • 5 mm long, the ovary about as long as the short style and the 2 long stigmatic arms. Fruit oblong, 1-5 mm. Fig. 24 : 3.
Use
3. Najas graminea Del, Fl. Egypte, 2 : 282, t.50, fig. 3 (1813); A. Benn. in F.T.A. 8 : 226 (1901). Type: Egypt, Rosetta Delta, Delile (MPU, hole).
Range
Collected once in Southern Africa but widely distributed elsewhere. Recorded from Egypt, tropical East Africa, Asia, Australia; introduced in Italy and Britain. Transvaal.—Pretoria: Wallmansthal, 20 miles E. of Pretoria on farm Haakdoringfontein, Mauve 4342.
