Plantae > Tracheophyta > Liliopsida > Poales > Poaceae > Melinis > Melinis minutiflora

Melinis minutiflora (puakatau; molassesgrass; molasses grass)

Synonyms:

Wikipedia Abstract

Melinis minutiflora, commonly known as molasses grass, is a species of grass. It is a perennial grass native to Africa. Its seeds are dispersed by wind. Molasses grass usually grows to be thirty to sixty inches tall, and it forms mats when its long, slender stems lay on top of each other in layers up to four feet deep. Molasses grass can spread up other plants, using them as support, like a vine. It has fragrant foliage and colorful inflorescences. It blooms for short periods with differing bloom times depending on where the grass is located. Molasses grass generally flowers in the southern hemisphere between April and June and in the northern hemisphere in November.
View Wikipedia Record: Melinis minutiflora

Invasive Species

View ISSG Record: Melinis minutiflora

Attributes

Lifespan [1]  Perennial
Structure [2]  Grass

Protected Areas

Name IUCN Category Area acres Location Species Website Climate Land Use
Archipelago de Colon Biosphere Reserve 34336011 Galapagos Islands, Ecuador  
Everglades and Dry Tortugas Biosphere Reserve   Florida, United States  
Gombe National Park II 8799 Tanzania
Norfolk Island National Park II 1723 Australian external territories, Australia  
Refugio de Vida Silvestre Reserva Karen Mogensen F. Nature Reserve 1866 Costa Rica  

Predators

Antonina graminis (felted grass coccid)[3]
Branta sandvicensis (Nene)[4]
Melanitis leda (Evening brown butterfly)[5]
Panoquina sylvicola[6]
Wallabia bicolor (Swamp Wallaby)[7]

Consumers

Parasitized by 
Helicotylenchus dihystera (Steiner's spiral nematode)[5]

External References

USDA Plant Profile

NatureServe Explorer

Citations

Attributes / relations provided by
♦ 1USDA Plants Database, U. S. Department of Agriculture
♦ 2Kattge, J. et al. (2011b) TRY - a global database of plant traits Global Change Biology 17:2905-2935
♦ 3Ben-Dov, Y., Miller, D.R. & Gibson, G.A.P. ScaleNet 4 November 2009
♦ 4del Hoyo, J., Elliott, A., Sargatal, J., Christie, D.A. & de Juana, E. (eds.). Handbook of the Birds of the World Alive. Lynx Edicions, Barcelona.
♦ 5Species Interactions of Australia Database, Atlas of Living Australia, Version ala-csv-2012-11-19
♦ 6Jorrit H. Poelen, James D. Simons and Chris J. Mungall. (2014). Global Biotic Interactions: An open infrastructure to share and analyze species-interaction datasets. Ecological Informatics.
♦ 7"Feeding Strategies of the Swamp Wallaby, Wallabia bicolor, on North Stradbroke Island, Queensland. I: Composition of Diets.", R Osawa, Australian Wildlife Research 17(6) 615 - 621 (1990)
Abstract provided by DBpedia licensed under a Creative Commons License
Species taxanomy provided by GBIF Secretariat (2022). GBIF Backbone Taxonomy. Checklist dataset https://doi.org/10.15468/39omei accessed via GBIF.org on 2023-06-13; License: CC BY 4.0