Ischaemum rugosum Salisb.Latin nameIschaemum rugosum Salisb. FamilyPoaceae Common nameWrinkle duck beak, saromacca grass SynonymsAndropogon arnottianus (Nees) Steudel, Colladoa distachia Cav., Ischaemum akoense Honda, I. segetum Trin., Meoschium arnottianum Nees, M. griffithii Nees & Arn., M. rugosum (Salisb.) Nees Geographical distributionAsia: China. South and Southeast Asia: Bangladesh, Cambodia, India, Indonesia, Lao PDR, Malaysia, Myanmar, Nepal, Pakistan, Philippines, Sri Lanka, Thailand, and Vietnam. Rest of the world: Australia, Colombia, Ecuador, Fiji, Madagascar, Nicaragua, Peru, Venezuela, and West Africa. MorphologyAn erect or ascending annual or perennial; up to 100 cm tall. Stem: often purplish, usually has hairs at nodes, cylindrical. Leaf: blades 10−30 cm long, glabrous or with scattered hairs on both surfaces; compressed sheaths rather loose and green or purplish, with hairs on margins; ligule membranous and fused with auricles. Inflorescence: paired terminal spikes that are often strongly pressed against one another, thus appearing like a single spike. At maturity, it separates into two spike-like racemes. Spikelets paired, one is sessile, the other pedicelled; sessile spikelet yellowish green, up to 6 mm long, first glume prominently transversely wrinkled; awns spiral at base, dark colored. Biology and ecologyPropagates by seeds. Seeds do not germinate while submerged though, after emergence, they can grow easily under flooded conditions. Ischaemum rugosum is found in wet conditions, especially in direct-seeded rice fields. Agricultural importanceIschaemum rugosum is a serious weed in lowland direct-seeded rice, where it emerges later than many weeds in the crop and is favored by shallow flooding. Also an alternate host of Chaetocnema basalis (Baly), Cicadulina bipunctata (Melichar), Hysteroneura setariae (Thomas), Leptocorisa acuta (Thunberg), Nisia carolinensis Fennah, Orseolia oryzae (Wood-Mason), Pseudococcus saccharicola Takahashi, Sesamia inferens (Walker), and Tetraneura nigriabdominalis (Sasaki), and diseases caused by tungro virus. It is also a host of the nematode Meloidogyne sp. Ischaemum rugosum is used as feed for animals. It also provides suitable material for mulch and compost. ManagementCultural control: hand weeding or hoeing. Chemical control: Butachlor, thiobencarb, pendimethalin, or mixtures of thiobencarb or butachlor and propanil, cyhalofop, and fenoxaprop can give effective control. Molinate is not effective in controlling I. rugosum. Selected references
JLA Catindig, RT Lubigan, and D Johnson |