Luzula racemosa
| Luzula racemosa | ||||||||||||
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| Luzula racemosa | ||||||||||||
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Luzula racemosa is a species of plant from the American tropics from the genus of the grove ( Luzula ). In the area on the Peruvian river Río Huancabamba ( Cajamarca region ), the plant is used as "hierba de dominación" in magical rites to dominate its enemies.
features
Luzula racemosa is a perennial, lawn-forming plant that reaches a height of 5 to 45 cm. The rhizomes are erect or ascending and do not form stolons . The stalks stand upright, are straight to slightly curved, and have a diameter of 0.5 to 2 mm. There are five to several basal leaves per stalk, which are in a loose rosette. The sheaths are short. The blades are pointed, 5 to 25 cm long and 0.1 to 0.4 cm wide, flat or sometimes thickened and concave. The 0 to 4 leaves on each stalk are up to 15 cm long, with their sheath taking up a sixth to a third of the length. The leaf margin is hairy, especially on young and stalk leaves.
The inflorescence is terminal, upright to nodding, and is a spike-like panicle of three or more flower clusters. These tufts are elongated to ovoid, 0.5 to 1.5 cm long and 0.3 to 1 cm wide, sessile to short stalked. The lowest bract of the inflorescence is herbaceous, linear, usually significantly longer than the flower clusters, but less than 5 cm long. The bracts above are increasingly shorter. The bracts are uneven, dark maroon or white. The outer ones are 2.5 to 4 mm long, the inner 2 to 3.5 mm. The mostly three, often six stamens are 0.6 to 1.5 mm long. The anthers are elongated to linear and 0.2 to 0.5 mm long. Usually they are shorter than the stamens.
The capsule fruit is broadly ellipsoidal to ovate, three-lobed to triangular, 1.5 to 2 mm long and 1 to 1.5 mm wide. The fruit is usually much shorter than the bracts, but sometimes almost the same length. The fruit is chestnut brown. When opening, the entire flap curves backwards. The seeds are ellipsoidal, 9.7 to 1.1 mm long and 0.4 to 0.6 mm wide, brown with a transparent, wrinkled outer seed coat.
distribution
Luzula racemosa occurs from the highlands from central Mexico to Guatemala and in the Andes from Venezuela to Chile and Argentina. It occurs from 2900 to 4700 m above sea level, but mostly above 3500 m. It grows in well-drained, sunny locations in clearings of the upper montane forest belt and in the Páramos above the tree line.
Systematics
Luzula racemosa is a very variable species with morphologically very different populations. However, there are no clear boundaries between them, and no connection is known between ecological and genetic variation. Balslev (1996) therefore combined the three Luzula racemosa , Luzula peruviana and Luzula chilensis, previously described as separate species, into one species, Luzula racemosa .