Species

Sorghum halepense

Common Name(s)

Johnson grass

Authority

Sorghum halepense (L.) Pers.

Family

Poaceae

Flora Category

Vascular - Exotic

NVS Species Code

SORHAL

The National Vegetation Survey (NVS) Databank is a physical archive and electronic databank containing records of over 94,000 vegetation survey plots - including data from over 19,000 permanent plots. NVS maintains a standard set of species code abbreviations that correspond to standard scientific plant names from the Ngä Tipu o Aotearoa - New Zealand Plants database.

Structural Class

Grasses

Similar Taxa

Root system freely branching, fibrous. Rhizomes stout, creeping with purple spots, usually with scales at the nodes. Stems erect, stout, from 0.45 to 1.8 m or more tall. Leaves alternate, simple, smooth 15 to 50 cm long, about 1.3 to 3.8 cm wide. Panicles large, purplish, hairy (Wax, Fawcett and Isely 1981).

Year Naturalised

1946

Origin

Mediterranean

Reproduction
seeds or rhizome fragments during cultivation (DoC, 1998)

Seed
Seed nearly 3mm long, oval, reddish-brown, marked with fine lines on surface, bearing a conspicuous awn easily broken off (Wax, Fawcett and Isely 1981).

Dispersal
wind, water, on the coats of animals, being ingested by birds and cattle, or in contaminated seeds and feed stocks (DoC, 1998).

Tolerances
The foliage is killed by frost but rhizomes can tolerate 2 days with soil temperatures of -3 to -5C (DoC, 1998)

This page last updated on 27 May 2010