Plants perennial; rhizomatous. Culms 10-50 cm, decumbent; nodes glabrous or pubescent. Sheaths glabrous; ligules 2-2.5 mm; blades to 12 cm long, 1.3-4.8 mm wide, flat. Panicles terminal, with 2-6 racemosely arranged branches; branches 1.3-5.3 cm, diverging to erect, often arcuate, persistent; branch axes 1.8-3 mm wide, broadly winged, usually conduplicate, glabrous, margins scabrous, terminating in a spikelet. Spikelets 1.7-2.1 mm long, 1.1-1.4 mm wide, solitary, appressed to the branch axes, elliptic to ovate, glabrous, stramineous. Lower glumes absent; upper glumes and lower lemmas 5-veined; upper florets stramineous, lemmas glabrous throughout. Caryopses 1-1.3 mm, white. 2n = 40, 60.

Paspalum dissectum grows at the edges of lakes, ponds, rice fields, and wet roadside ditches. It is native to the eastern portion of the contiguous United States and Cuba.

Stems creeping and forming mats, or ascending to erect and branched from the base, 2-5 dm, glabrous; sheaths loose, glabrous, often purplish; blades linear, glabrous, 3-10 cm נ2-4 mm; panicle often overtopped by the uppermost lvs; racemes 2-5, 2-3 cm; rachis to 4 mm wide, ±folded over the spikelets, ending in a spikelet; spikelets solitary, crowded, elliptic to obovate, glabrous, 1.7-2.1 mm, two-thirds as wide; glume and sterile lemma 3-5-veined; 2n=40. Shallow water and muddy shores on the coastal plain from s. N.J. to Fla. and Tex., n. in the Mississippi Valley to s. Ill. and s. Mo.; Cuba.

Gleason, Henry A. & Cronquist, Arthur J. 1991. Manual of vascular plants of northeastern United States and adjacent Canada. lxxv + 910 pp.

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