Literature review: Impact of Chilean needle grass ... - Weeds Australia

affirmed the opinion of Longhi-Wagner and Zanin (1998) that N. neesiana is present in Paraguay, but cited a single specimen
that Barkworth and Torres (2001) considered to be N. argentinensis (Speg.) Peñail. Furthermore, Barkworth and Torres (2001)
did not list Brazil, Paraguay or Uruguay as part of the range of N. mucronata, so it appears likely that the entity Longhi-Wagner
and Zanin (1998) treated as S. setigera and considered to be the same as N. neesiana was not the same entity as the S. setigera
assigned to N. mucronata by Barkworth and Torres, but was equivalent to the N. neesiana of Barkworth and Torres. N.
mucronata is not recorded from Brazil (Torres 1997, Barkworth and Torres 2001), but it remains unclear how Longhi-Wagner
and Zanin (1998) treated extra-Brazilian literature records of S. setigera sens. lat. and whether they considered which of them
were Nassella mucronata. Further complicating interpretation, Barkworth and Torres (2001) listed Portugal, Spain, France and
Italy as countries to which N. mucronata had been introduced, but Verloove (2005) found that the name S. setigera had been
misapplied to these European records, i.e. the specimens were misidentified, and were in fact N. neesiana, not N. mucronata, and
that this probably also applied to Mexican S. setigera, which was also N. neesiana. Given this confusing situation, the entities
actually present in Columbia, and Mexico, and perhaps Brazil appear to require clarification.
Gardener et al. (1996b) stated that in South America as a whole N. neesiana had a latitudinal range of at least 22-51º S. Gardener
(1998), corrected this to 26-40º, stating that the published record from Chile at 50º 53’ S by Soto (1984) was most likely a
misidentification of Stipa brevipes Desvaux. However even the wider latitudinal range fails to cover either Ecuador or Peru, and
excludes Bolivia except for a small area in the extreme south.The narrower range excludes all of Bolivia, most of Paraguay and
indicates the absence of herbarium and literature records from most of southern Argentina. In southern South America it has a
continuous distribution from near the coast of Chile, across the Andean zone and the pampas of Argentina through Uruguay to
the Paranaense (south east Brazil) region (Longhi-Wagner and Zanin 1998, as Stipa setigera). In tropical and subtropical South
America it occurs in highland enviroments (Martín Osorio et al. 2000) north along the Andes to Ecuador, to c. 1.5°N. Columbia
and Venezuela are probably the only South American countries in which Stipa sens. lat. has been recorded (Columbia has 3 spp.
and Venezuela 5: Longhi-Wagner and Zanin 1998) but in which S. neesiana has not. However its presence in the province of
Carchi of Ecuador suggests that it may well occur in south-western mountains of Columbia.
In Argentina it is found in the following provinces - in the east (Misiones, Corrientes, Entre Ríos), the centro del pais (Buenos
Aires, Córdoba, San Luis, La Pampa, Santa Fé), the west (Mendoza, San Juan), the north (Chaco, Formosa), the northwest
(Jujuy) and the northeast (Catamarca, La Rioja, Salta and Tucumán) (Caro 1966, Gardener et al. 1996b, Torres 1997, Gardener
1998). It is present in the Ventania land system in the south-west of Buenos Aires Province, north of Bahía Blanca (Amiotti et al.
2007). Large populations are common in the central west around the Sierra de Córdoba (Sierras Pampeanas) (Anderson et al.
2002), where the grasslands are at moderately high altitudes (Soriano et al. 1992). It is a common species in the pampas, a vast,
humid, fertile plain stretching from the Rio de La Plata and the Atlantic coast west towards the Andes, occupying the provinces
of Buenos Aires, parts of Entre Rios and southern Santa Fé, into western San Luis, northern La Pampa and southern Córdoba
provinces (Soriano et al. 1992). In Santa Fe province it is a characteristic species of the Pampean phytogeographical province
flechillar Stipeae community in Rosario County in the south of the province, and in San Cristóbal County in the central west of
the province is the dominant species of another flechillar grassland community of the Espinal phytogeographical province
(Feldman et al. 2008). In Entre Ríos it was recorded by Zucol (1996) from Santo Ana, Dpto. Federación; Puerto Yerúa, Dpto.
Concordia; Dpto. Villaguay; San José, Dpto. Depto. Colón; Colonia Elia, Dpto. Uruguay; Dpto. Gualeguay; and Camino a
Puerto Unzué, Dpto. Gualeguaychú. It is not a dominant grass in the semiarid southern Caldén District near Gaviotas, west of
Bahía Blanca (Distel 2008), nor is it one of the major grasses in the whole Caldenal, a 10 million ha semi-arid region extending
from the Atlantic coast south of Bahía Blanca north west to the Sierra de Córdoba, to the south and west of the Humid Pampa
(Fernández et al. 2009). Martín Osorio et al. (2000) mention its presence in Patagonia (apparently citing Rivas Martínez) but
other references to its presence there have not been found. In Uruguay it is common in pastures (Gardener et al. 1996b citing
Rosengurtt et al. 1970) with records in the south, north-west and north-east (Gardener 1998) including Florida (Bowden and
Senn 1962) and Montevideo (Barkworth et al. 2007). In Paraguay it was collected in 1989 at Chacoí in the far south of the
province of Presidente Hayes, near the border with Central province, in the vicinity of Asuncion (Zanin 2008), east of Formosa
province in Argentina. But it possibly occurs also in southern Paraguay, being known from close to the border in the states of
Misiones and Corrientes in Argentina (Gardener et al. 1996b, Gardener 1998). Temperate grassland is present in Paraguay only
in small area of the far south-east (Overbeck and Pfadenhauer 2007) in the vicinity of Encarnacion, immediately to the northwest
of Misiones. In Brazil it is found in the south (McLaren, Stajsic and Iaconis. 2004), in the states of Rio Grande do Sul and
Santa Catarina, where it is the most common species of Stipa sens. lat. (Longhi-Wagner and Zanin 1998). In Uruguay and Brazil
it is mostly found in the campos, a temperate subhumid grassland formation similar to the Argentine pampas, covering most of
Uruguay and the southern Rio Grande do Sul of Brazil (Soriano et al. 1992). In Brazil it is considered a characteristic species in
the Pampa biome of the southern Rio Grande do Sul (Overbeck et al. 2007 – as “Stipa setigera C.Presl.”). It was not recorded
from a humid subtropical grassland site in the Atlantic Forest biome on Morro Santana (30°03’S) by Overbeck et al. (2006). The
most southerly distribution on the continent is in Chile, where it is found over a wide latitudinal range, at least from c. 26º 30’ to
40º S (Gardener et al. 1996b, Gardener 1998). In continental Chile it is found in the Metropolitan Region (Santiago 33-34°S) and
Regions IV (29-32°S), V (32-33°S), VIII-IX (35-39°S) and X (39-44°S ) (Baeza et al. 2007). It was collected at Concepcion
(36°50’S) by Senn (Bowden and Senn 1962) and has been recorded on Robinson Crusoe Island (Más á Tierra) (33º 38’ S 76º 52’
W) (Nelis 2006, Baeza et al. 2007) and Alejandro Selkirk Island (Más Afuera), in the Juan Fernández group, c. 650 km west of
mainland Chile, where it is considered to have been introduced (Baeza et al. 2007). It is known from Valparaíso (the types of S.
longiflora) and near Santiago (the type of S. trachysperma) (Barkworth et al. 2007). In the northern part of its South American
range its is found at high altitude. In Bolivia it is known from La Paz (Martín Osorio et al. 2000) and was collected at
Cochabamba (17°26’S 66°10’W) by Senn (Bowden and Senn 1962). In Ecuador it is also native to the Andean region, at
altitudes of 3000-3500 m in the Provinces of Carchi (c. 1.5° north of the equator near the Columbian border) and Canar (Clark et
al. 1999-2008).
The type of var. fernandeziana is from the Juan Fernández Islands of Chile (Barkworth et al. 2007). Vars. formicarioides,
gracilior and virescens are endemic to Argentina, vars. hirsuta and longiaristata are recorded from Argentina and Uruguay, and
var. neesiana is recorded from Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile and Uruguay (Zuloaga et al. 1994). Populations in north-eastern
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