Culms 120-180 cm; nodes
glabrous; internodes mostly hollow,
solid for 1 cm below the spikes. Blades
to 18 mm wide, shortly pubescent to villous. Spikes 7-14 cm, about as wide as thick, except when branched below;
rachises hairy at the nodes and
margins, not disarticulating. Spikelets
10-16 mm, with 5-7 florets, 2-5 seed-forming. Glumes 8-11 mm, coriaceous, loosely appressed to the lower florets,
with 1 prominent keel, terminating in a tooth, tooth to 0.3 cm; lemmas 10-13 mm, lowest 2 lemmas awned,
awns to 20 cm; paleas not splitting
at maturity. Endosperm mealy. HaplomesAuB. 2n = 28.
Triticum turgidum is the tallest of the wheats, and differs from
other species of domesticated wheat in having branched-spike forms. It is grown
primarily in southern Europe, northern Iraq, southern Iran, and western
Pakistan. As treated here, T. turgidum
is a narrowly distributed taxon of minor importance in plant breeding. Under
genomic classifications, however, the name is applied to all AuB taxa, e.g., to T. polonicum, T. durum, and T. carthlicum,
as well as to T. turgidumsensu stricto.
