Fertile plain of Central Punjab Pakistan is rich with fodder grasses and from centuries the local inhabitants of this area have been using their regional grasses for ruminant feeding. However, they always faced difficulties in identification because of their overlapping vernacular names, more or less identical leaf shapes, indefinite variations in stem branching pattern, and reduced floral parts. Hence, the current study has provided a detailed and comprehensive micro‐morphological analysis of 53 ethnobotanical fodder grass taxa. A variety of quantitative and qualitative leaf epidermal micromorphological traits was studied and results reported epidermal characters like stomatal index, silica bodies, prickles, microhairs, hook cells as most diagnostic in delimitation of species, and genera. As stomatal index was 79% in Poa annua while in its closely related species Poa infirmai was 85%. Similarly, Cenchrus ciliaris can be differentiated from Cenchrus pennisetiformis on the basis of silica body shape as butterfly shaped in former and dumbbell shaped in later one. Moreover, prickles were present in Chrysopogon aucheri while absent in Chrysopogon zizanioides. Hence, overall this study declared that diversity and variations in foliar micromorphological characters are valuable and supportive in the identification of grasses at the specific and generic level.

中文翻译：

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基于光和扫描电子显微镜的叶微形态学工具，用于鉴定饲料草类群。

巴基斯坦旁遮普邦中部肥沃的平原富含饲料草，几个世纪以来，该地区的当地居民一直在使用其当地的草作为反刍动物的饲料。然而，由于它们重叠的白话名字，或多或少相同的叶片形状，茎分支模式的不确定变化以及花的减少，它们始终在识别方面面临困难。因此，本研究提供了对53种植物植物饲料类群的详细而全面的微观形态学分析。研究了各种定量和定性的叶片表皮微形态特征，结果报告了表皮特征，如气孔指数，硅质体，皮刺，微毛，钩形细胞，最能确定物种和属。由于气孔指数为79％早熟禾，而在其近缘种早熟infirmai为85％。同样，基于二氧化硅的体形，Cenchrus ciliaris可以与Cenchrus pennisetiformis区别开，前者为蝴蝶形，后者为哑铃形。此外，皮刺存在于金须茅属aucheri而不存在于香根草。因此，总体而言，这项研究表明，叶的微观形态特征的多样性和变异对于特定和一般水平的草的鉴定具有重要价值和支持作用。