Hi all,

I'd like to ask some help for Phalaris arundinacea identification. Here's a species that I found growing in Hungary. It's growing just about everywhere, including our back yard, and it's about 1-1.5m (3-5 feet) tall. I'm 100% positive it's a phalaris species, though the online P. arundinacea photos differ quite much, so I'm not certain what it is. Here are the photo shots:

The plant:
http://img263.imageshack.../img263/5747/plant1e.jpg
http://img64.imageshack.us/img64/5980/plant2.jpg

Inflorescence:
http://img412.imageshack.us/img412/1659/flora1.jpg
http://img408.imageshack.us/img408/4173/flora2.jpg
http://img10.imageshack.us/img10/1656/flora3a.jpg

Leafs:
http://img6.imageshack.us/img6/4972/leafs1.jpg

Roots:
http://img69.imageshack.us/img69/9839/rootsh.jpg

Seeds:
http://img63.imageshack.us/img63/4419/seedsw.jpg

There's some variation in the inflorescence, some some have a similar, but more closed structure. Can anyone confirm if this is phalaris arundinacea, or a closely related species that may worth doing an extraction?

P.S. I'm not much concerned about gramine - I could not find any references whatsoever about gramine being toxic to humans, so I think it's just a myth that's kept repeated all the time. I found one short reference of gramine having no hallucinogenic properties (Gessner et al. 1961), so I guess they bioassayed it, reporting no effects (unfortunately I couldn't find the details). Trout's notes FS-X7 also reports an LD50 for gramine that's higher than DMT (44.6 mg/kg iv mice vs. 32 mg/kg iv mice for DMT), so in that sense, DMT is more toxic than gramine.

It certainly looks like phalaris-arundinacea. The close up picture of the 'sheath' and 'ligule' at the leaf blade/stem junction is exactly like Arundinacea's. The reason you may be confused as to why the various P. Arundinacea pictures you've seen online sometimes appear different from each other is probably because there are several types of Phalaris-Arundinacea. Three sub categories being: Phalaris arundinacea L. var. picta
Phalaroides arundinacea (L.) Raeusch.
Phalaris arundinacea L. f. variegata (Parn.)

It's definitely apart of the "Pocea" family of grass. At least I'm very sure of that...
I agree that it's P. Arundinacea, however, I've never had any yields that type of grass. From what I've heard. Phalaris Arundinacea's spice content can vary from moderate amounts to almost no trace of spice. It's fickle in my opinion, but some people seem to have luck with it.

Peace

Well, I guess that's good news! It's no problem if the yield is low, because it's so abundant here that entire fields are full of this plant, literally. Vinegar and water is cheap, after all Anyhow, I'll post results after SWIM does some collecting and cooking.

I realized that this species is Dactylis glomerata, not P. arundinacea
http://www.zum.de/stueber/lindman/457.jpg

But meanwhile I found out that my neighbour is growing P. arundinacea var. tricolor on his front lawn