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Lolium perenne, common name perennial ryegrass, [1] English ryegrass, winter ryegrass, or ray grass, is a grass from the family Poaceae. It is native to Europe, Asia and northern Africa, but is widely cultivated and naturalised around the world.
Lolium multiflorum (Italian rye-grass, [2] annual ryegrass) is a ryegrass native to temperate Europe, though its precise native range is unknown. [3] It is a herbaceous annual, biennial, or perennial grass that is grown for silage, and as a cover crop. [4] [5] It is also grown as an ornamental grass.
The primary species found worldwide and used both for lawns and as a forage crop is perennial ryegrass (Lolium perenne). Like many cool-season grasses of the Poaceae, it harbors a symbiotic fungal endophyte, either Epichloë or its close relative Neotyphodium, both of which are members of the fungal family Clavicipitaceae. [10] [11]
Canada wild rye is a perennial bunchgrass reaching heights of 1 to 1.5 metres (3 ft 3 in to 4 ft 11 in). It grows from a small rhizome, forms a shallow, fine root network, and is a facultative mycotroph, receiving about 25% of its nutrients on average from symbiotic mycorrhizae. [5]
Many are bunch grasses and tussock grasses, though others form extensive systems of many-branched rhizomes. The bunching types are often called "clump-forming" or "clumping", distinct from the rhizomatous types, called "running". Sizes vary from a few centimeters up to several meters; the larger bamboos may reach 20 m or more tall.
Grasses have adapted to conditions in lush rain forests, dry deserts, cold mountains and even intertidal habitats, and are currently the most widespread plant type; grass is a valuable source of food and energy for all sorts of wildlife. A cladogram shows subfamilies and approximate species numbers in brackets: [14]
Perennial ryegrass staggers is poisoning by peramine, lolitrem B, and other toxins that are contained in perennial ryegrass (Lolium perenne), and produced by the endophyte fungus Epichloë festucae which can be present in all parts of the grass plant, but tends to be concentrated in the lower part of the leaf sheaths, the flower stalks and seeds.
Raunkiær's life-form scheme has subsequently been revised and modified by various authors, [6] [7] [8] but the main structure has survived. Raunkiær's life-form system may be useful in researching the transformations of biotas and the genesis of some groups of phytophagous animals.