''Piptatherum holciforme'' is an Old World species of

cereal A cereal is a grass cultivated for its edible grain. Cereals are the world's largest crops, and are therefore staple foods. They include rice, wheat, rye, oats, barley, millet, and maize ( Corn). Edible grains from other plant families, ...

grass known by the common names rice grass, hairy ricegrass, and hairy millet grass. The seed of the plant is a type of grain

millet Millets () are a highly varied group of small-seeded grasses, widely grown around the world as cereal crops or grains for fodder and human food. Most millets belong to the tribe Paniceae. Millets are important crops in the Semi-arid climate, ...

Description

''Piptatherum holciforme'' is

perennial In horticulture, the term perennial ('' per-'' + '' -ennial'', "through the year") is used to differentiate a plant from shorter-lived annuals and biennials. It has thus been defined as a plant that lives more than 2 years. The term is also ...

and stands erect about . Dissected

leaves A leaf (: leaves) is a principal appendage of the stem of a vascular plant, usually borne laterally above ground and specialized for photosynthesis. Leaves are collectively called foliage, as in "autumn foliage", while the leaves, stem, ...

branch from its base, growing in clusters of several propagation runners. The stems are sessile, slightly tilting forward because of the weight of the

inflorescence In botany, an inflorescence is a group or cluster of flowers arranged on a plant's Plant stem, stem that is composed of a main branch or a system of branches. An inflorescence is categorized on the basis of the arrangement of flowers on a mai ...

, each made up of 3–4

internodes A stem is one of two main structural axes of a vascular plant, the other being the root. It supports leaves, flowers and fruits, transports water and dissolved substances between the roots and the shoots in the xylem and phloem, engages in pho ...

. The

grains A grain is a small, hard, dry fruit ( caryopsis) – with or without an attached hull layer – harvested for human or animal consumption. A grain crop is a grain-producing plant. The two main types of commercial grain crops are cereals and le ...

are borne upon a

panicle In botany, a panicle is a much-branched inflorescence. (softcover ). Some authors distinguish it from a compound spike inflorescence, by requiring that the flowers (and fruit) be pedicellate (having a single stem per flower). The branches of a p ...

, consisting of spikelets with a short

caducous Dehiscence is the splitting of a mature plant structure along a built-in line of weakness to release its contents. This is common among fruits, anthers and sporangia. Sometimes this involves the complete detachment of a part. Structures that op ...

awn; each grain being ovoid in shape, pointed at one end and having a shiny black appearance. Each seedling bears micro-hairs. The seed and the lower chaff that encloses the seed reach a length of 1–1.5 cm, without the awn (spikelets), making them the largest and longest of all species of '' Piptatherum'' that grow in Israel.

Taxonomy

The plant was first described in 1808 by the German botanist Friedrich August Freiherr Marschall von Bieberstein as belonging to the taxon '' Agrostis holciformis''. The plant's modern taxonomic name was described in 1817 by the Swiss botanist and entomologist

Johann Jacob Roemer Johann Jacob Roemer (8 January 1763, Zürich – 15 January 1819) was a Swiss physician and professor of botany in Zürich, Switzerland. He was also an entomologist. With Austrian botanist Joseph August Schultes, he published the 16th edition of ...

and his colleague, the Austrian botanist

Josef August Schultes Josef (Joseph) August Schultes (15 April 1773 in Vienna – 21 April 1831 in Landshut) was an Austrian botanist and professor from Vienna. Together with Johann Jacob Roemer (1763–1819), he published the 16th edition of Linnaeus' ''Systema ...

Habitat and distribution

''Piptatherum holciforme'' grows in waste habitats, along waysides, and adapts well in moist, stony chalkstone soils in Mediterranean

scrubland Shrubland, scrubland, scrub, brush, or bush is a plant community characterized by vegetation dominance (ecology), dominated by shrubs, often also including grasses, herbaceous plant, herbs, and geophytes. Shrubland may either occur naturally o ...

. Its global distribution extends across Europe, North Africa and the Middle East.

Uses

To what extent the cereal grass was cultivated in the past by indigenous peoples is now unclear, owing to the multiple varieties of

and panic.

Ohalo Ohalo II is an archaeological site in the Northern District, Israel, near Kinneret, on the southwest shore of the Sea of Galilee. It is one of the best preserved hunter-gatherer archaeological sites of the Last Glacial Maximum, radiocarbon date ...

, a

Paleolithic The Paleolithic or Palaeolithic ( years ago) ( ), also called the Old Stone Age (), is a period in human prehistory that is distinguished by the original development of stone tools, and which represents almost the entire period of human prehist ...

hunter-gatherer archaeological site in

Galilee Galilee (; ; ; ) is a region located in northern Israel and southern Lebanon consisting of two parts: the Upper Galilee (, ; , ) and the Lower Galilee (, ; , ). ''Galilee'' encompasses the area north of the Mount Carmel-Mount Gilboa ridge and ...

, along the shore of the Sea of Galilee, revealed a storage facility where the grains of hairy millet grass, along with other grains, had been stored. In Israel, seedlings of hairy millet grass are sometimes used to reseed marginal land for pasture. The millet can be ground into meal and prepared as a

porridge Porridge is a food made by heating, soaking or boiling ground, crushed or chopped starchy plants, typically grain, in milk or water. It is often cooked or served with added flavourings such as sugar, honey, fruit, or syrup to make a sweet cereal ...

In culture

In classical

Hebrew literature Hebrew literature consists of ancient, medieval, and modern writings in the Hebrew language. It is one of the primary forms of Jewish literature, though there have been cases of literature written in Hebrew by non-Jews, mostly among the Arab cit ...

, the plant falls under the generic classification of "millet" (), one of the cereal grasses, and is probably the ''naqlivas'' () mentioned in the

Babylonian Talmud The Talmud (; ) is the central text of Rabbinic Judaism and the primary source of Jewish religious law (''halakha'') and Jewish theology. Until the advent of modernity, in nearly all Jewish communities, the Talmud was the centerpiece of Jewi ...

(''Avodah Zarah'') as once being used by idolaters.Based on the identification of ''naqlivas'' given by

Nathan ben Abraham Nathan ben Abraham, known also by the epithet ''President of the Academy'' () in the Land of Israel (died ca. 1045 – 1051), was an 11th-century rabbi and exegete of the Mishnah who lived in Ramla, in the Jund Filastin district of the Fatimid C ...

and

Maimonides Moses ben Maimon (1138–1204), commonly known as Maimonides (, ) and also referred to by the Hebrew acronym Rambam (), was a Sephardic rabbi and Jewish philosophy, philosopher who became one of the most prolific and influential Torah schola ...

Mishnah The Mishnah or the Mishna (; , from the verb ''šānā'', "to study and review", also "secondary") is the first written collection of the Jewish oral traditions that are known as the Oral Torah. Having been collected in the 3rd century CE, it is ...

''Avodah Zarah'' 1:5. See . The same explanation is also found in the Judeo-Arabic lexicon compiled by Rabbi Tanḥum ben Joseph Ha-Yerushalmi (c. 1220–1291), entitled ''Murshid al-Kāfī'' (

Bodleian Library The Bodleian Library () is the main research library of the University of Oxford. Founded in 1602 by Sir Thomas Bodley, it is one of the oldest libraries in Europe. With over 13 million printed items, it is the second-largest library in ...

MS. Huntington 621, fram
152v
, where he explains נקלבס as meaning "a very precious type of grass used in worship," but adds that some say that it is "a thing mixed with spices, while others explain its meaning as גוארשן (

Arabic Arabic (, , or , ) is a Central Semitic languages, Central Semitic language of the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family spoken primarily in the Arab world. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) assigns lang ...

: الجاورس = i.e. millet)." Other Talmudic exegetes explain ''naqlivas'' as being a type of date.

References

External links

Wild Flowers of Israel. ''Piptatherum holciforme''
*

JSTOR JSTOR ( ; short for ''Journal Storage'') is a digital library of academic journals, books, and primary sources founded in 1994. Originally containing digitized back issues of academic journals, it now encompasses books and other primary source ...

br>Global Plants: ''Piptatherum holciforme''

Phylogenetics of Piptatherum s.l. (Poaceae: Stipeae): Evidence for a new genus, Piptatheropsis, and resurrection of Patis (TAXON, 2011

Royal Botanic Gardens: Kew Science
Online Plants of the World (''Piptatherum holciforme'' (M.Bieb.) Roem. & Schult.) * {{Authority control Plants described in 1817 Stipeae Grasses of Asia Flora of Israel Flora of Lebanon Flora of Syria Flora of Jordan Flora of Saudi Arabia Flora of Greece Flora of Turkey Flora of Sinai Flora of Montenegro Flora of Bosnia and Herzegovina Flora of Serbia Flora of Kosovo Flora of Albania Flora of Romania Flora of Bulgaria Flora of the Crimean Peninsula Flora of Libya Flora of Kazakhstan Flora of Turkmenistan Flora of Uzbekistan Flora of Georgia (country) Flora of the Caucasus Flora of Armenia Flora of North Macedonia Flora of Azerbaijan Flora of Iraq Flora of Iran Flora of Afghanistan Flora of Yemen Cereals Forages