''Agnesia'' is a

genus Genus (; : genera ) is a taxonomic rank above species and below family (taxonomy), family as used in the biological classification of extant taxon, living and fossil organisms as well as Virus classification#ICTV classification, viruses. In bino ...

of herbaceous

South America South America is a continent entirely in the Western Hemisphere and mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a considerably smaller portion in the Northern Hemisphere. It can also be described as the southern Subregion#Americas, subregion o ...

bamboo Bamboos are a diverse group of mostly evergreen perennial plant, perennial flowering plants making up the subfamily (biology), subfamily Bambusoideae of the grass family Poaceae. Giant bamboos are the largest members of the grass family, in th ...

in the

grass family Poaceae ( ), also called Gramineae ( ), is a large and nearly ubiquitous family of monocotyledonous flowering plants commonly known as grasses. It includes the cereal grasses, bamboos, the grasses of natural grassland and species cultivated in ...

. It is named in honor of agrostologist (botanical specialist in the area of grasses) Mary Agnes Chase (1869-1963). The only known species is ''Agnesia lancifolia'', native to lowland tropical rainforests of

Brazil Brazil, officially the Federative Republic of Brazil, is the largest country in South America. It is the world's List of countries and dependencies by area, fifth-largest country by area and the List of countries and dependencies by population ...

Colombia Colombia, officially the Republic of Colombia, is a country primarily located in South America with Insular region of Colombia, insular regions in North America. The Colombian mainland is bordered by the Caribbean Sea to the north, Venezuel ...

and

Peru Peru, officially the Republic of Peru, is a country in western South America. It is bordered in the north by Ecuador and Colombia, in the east by Brazil, in the southeast by Bolivia, in the south by Chile, and in the south and west by the Pac ...

. ''Agnesia lancifolia'' is perennial herb with 7-10 stems per clump, each up to 50 cm tall. Lower leaves lacking blades or with blades less than 5 mm long; upper leaves with blades up to 16 cm long. Each stem has 1-6 racemes at the tips of the culm or from the axils of the upper leaves,

pistillate Gynoecium (; ; : gynoecia) is most commonly used as a collective term for the parts of a flower that produce ovules and ultimately develop into the fruit and seeds. The gynoecium is the innermost whorl of a flower; it consists of (one or more) ...

(female) and staminate (male) flowers in different spikelets on the same plant.Zuloaga, F. O. & E. J. Judziewicz. 1993. ''Agnesia'', a new genus of Amazonian herbaceous bamboos (Poaceae: Bambusoideae: Olyreae). Novon 3(3): 306–309.
/ref>Mez, Carl Christian 1917. Novae species panicearum. Notizblatt des Botanischen Gartens und Museums zu Berlin-Dahlem 7(63): 45-78.
/ref>

References

Bambusoideae genera Monotypic Poaceae genera Flora of the Amazon Bambusoideae {{Bamboo-stub

See also

References