Festuca viviparoidea Krajina ex Pavlick subsp. viviparoidea

Desjardins, Émilie, Lai, Sandra, Payette, Serge, Dubé, Martin, Sokoloff, Paul C., St-Louis, Annie, Poulin, Marie-Pier, Legros, Jade, Sirois, Luc, Vézina, François, Tam, Andrew & Berteaux, Dominique, 2021, Survey of the vascular plants of Alert (Ellesmere Island, Canada), a polar desert at the northern tip of the Americas, Check List 17 (1), pp. 181-225 : 206-207

Festuca viviparoidea Krajina ex Pavlick subsp. viviparoidea

Figures 11E, 12D

Materials examined. CANADA – Nunavut • Ellesmere

Island, CFS Alert; 82°30′04″N, 062°52′41″W; 93 m a.s.l.; 2 Aug. 2019; habitat: xeric in a slope, with hummocks made of till and rocks, dominated by Saxifraga oppositi- folia and moss; QFA 0635517 • same locality; 82°29′12″N, 062°50′55″W; 86 m a.s.l.; 27 Aug. 2019; habitat: mesic in a slope, with peat and till as substrates, dominated by Salix arctica , Saxifraga oppositifolia , Stellaria longipes , and Puccinellia vahliana (Liebmann) Scribner & Merrill ; QFA 0635540 • same locality; 82°30′21″N, 062°41′20″W; 66 m a.s.l.; 1 Aug. 2019; habitat: mesic in a slope, with till and rocks as substrates, dominated by Salix arctica ; QFA 0635587.

Identification. Plants 7.0– 15.5 cm high; herbaceous; caespitose. Fibrous roots present. Stems 6–14 cm long; erect; glabrous and scabrous on angles below the inflo- rescence. Leaves basal and cauline. Sheath margins glabrous or hairy, with short simple hairs. Ligules 0.2–0.5 mm long. Basal leaf blades 12–25 mm long, 0.3–0.7 mm wide; linear; folded or rolled in bud; abaxial surface glabrous or scabrous; adaxial surface scabrous; margins glabrous or scabrous. Flag leaf blades 10.9–11.2 mm long, 0.2–0.3 mm wide; tip linear. Inflorescence a dense pani- cle, with bulbils allowing vegetative reproduction; 26–30 mm long. Branch at lowest inflorescence node 1; 1.5–2.2 mm long. Pedicels scabrous. Spikelets 10–14 mm long, 1.1–2.0 mm wide. Florets per spikelet 2 or 3. First glumes 2.8–3.1 mm long; lanceolate; surface glabrous or hairy, with hairs at the apices only; margins ciliate; apices acuminate. Second glumes 3.9–4.0 mm long (shorter than the lowest lemma); lanceolate; veins 3; surface glabrous and scabrous apically; margins ciliate; apices acute. Lemmas 4.1–6.7 mm long, 0.6–0.8 mm wide; lanceolate; keeled; veins 5; surface dull, sparsely scabrous, and hairy apically (on the projection), with short hairs; apices acuminate and glabrous; awnless. Palea vestigial or absent. Rachilla absent. Bulbils 3.3–9.6 mm long. Androecium and gynoecium absent.

Among the five Festuca species present on Ellesmere Island ( GBIF 2020), F. viviparoidea subsp. viviparoidea is the only one with pseudoviviparous spikelets (in contrast to F. baffinensis , F. brachyphylla subsp. brachyphylla , F. edlundiae , and F. hyperborea ; Aiken et al. 2007).