Common Reed

This is an extremely polymorphic, cosmopolitan reed with numerous chromosomal variants and ecotypes. Plants from the high Himalayas sometimes form short, leafy tufts with strongly distichous, short, pungent leaf blades. Similar variants occur elsewhere in the world in extreme conditions.

Plants with short, convolute, pungent leaf-blades and sheaths less than 3 cm long have been separated as var. stenophylla (Boiss.) Bor. Clayton (1967), however, has pointed out that shoots displaying this habit can occasionally be found growing from normal plants of both this species and Phragmites karka, and for this reason the variety is hardly worthy of recognition.

Common or Ditch Reed is found on limestone slopes in open forest in the mountains, margins of lakes and ponds and in shallow water in the plains.

Tall reed. Rhizome conspicuous. Ligule 1 mm long, upper margin fimbriate, blade 2 cm wide. Panicle large, open. Spikelets usually 3-flowered, 14 mm long; glumes lanceolate, chartaceous, 3-nerved, sometimes tessellate-nerved; the lower 4 mm long; lemma 7-10 mm long, chartaceous, 3-nerved, lanceolate, glabrous; callus elongated with silky hairs; palea 2.5-4 mm long, 2-keeled, margins minutely ciliate, apex truncate.

Robust perennial from an extensive creeping rhizome; overground stolons sometimes present, straight, nodes glabrous. Culms up to 2 m or more tall, ca. 6 mm in diam., usually farinose below nodes, nodes glabrous or pubescent. Leaf sheaths light green, glabrous or thinly hairy; leaf blades usually drooping, up to 50 × 1–3 cm, smooth or margins scabrous, tapering to a filiform apex; ligule a minute membranous rim, ciliate, hairs 0.2–0.6 mm. Panicle 20–50 × ca. 10 cm, branches of lowermost whorl usually spiculate to base, densely hirsute at insertion; pedicels 2–4 mm, glabrous or pilose only at base. Spikelets 10–18 mm, florets 2–5; glumes acute, lower glume up to 1/2 length of lowest lemma, 3–5 mm, upper glume 6–9 mm; lowest lemma linear-lanceolate, 8–15 mm; floret callus with hairs equal to lemma; bisexual lemmas very narrowly lanceolate, 9–16 mm, apex long attenuate. Fl. and fr. Jul–Nov. 2n = 36, 44, 46, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 54, 84, 96, 120.

Perennial reed, with creeping rhizomes. Culms erect, 1.5-3(6) m high. Leaf-blades 20-60 cm (or more) long and 8-32 mm wide, glabrous, smooth beneath, the tips filiform and flexuous (sometimes stiff and pungent, see below). Panicle 20-30(-50) cm long and 6-10(-15) cm wide, the lowest node usually few-branched, some of the branches bearing spikelets nearly to their base. Spikelets 12-18 mm long, the rhachilla-hairs 6-10 mm long, copious, silky; lower glume 3-4.5 mm long; upper glume lanceolate, 5-9 mm long, sharply acute, usually apiculate; lowest lemma linear lanceolate to linear-oblong, 8-15 mm long; fertile lemmas very narrowly lanceolate, 9-13 mm long.

Widely distributed in the northern hemisphere.

Widespread in temperate regions, N.W. India, Nepal.

Distribution: Pakistan (Punjab & Kashmir); temperate regions of both hemispheres in the Old World and the New.

3000-3600 m

Fl. & Fr. Per.: July-October.

Moist places along river banks and lake margins, forming large colonies. Throughout China [cosmopolitan].

Arundo australis Cavanilles, Anales Hist. Nat. 1: 100. 1799; A. phragmites Linnaeus; Phragmites communis Trinius.