**5. Taxonomic diversity of Chilean grasses**

In Chile, Poaceae number approximately 523 species and 57 infraspecific taxa, distributed in 122 genera (Table 2), representing about 10.1% of the Chilean flora. Poaceae is the second most diverse family of angiosperms in Chile after Asteraceae with about 863 species (Moreira-Muñoz & Muñoz-Schick, 2007). Of the 13 subfamilies of Poaceae, eight are present in Chile. As expected, most of the Chilean grasses (388 spp., 75%) belong to the subfamily Pooideae, followed by a few Panicoideae (59 spp., 10%), and Chloridoideae (43 spp., 7.9%). Species are distributed in 17 tribes and 43 subtribes. Three-hundred and fifty six species (68%) are native, 58 species (11%) are endemic and 109 species and 12 varieties (21%) are introduced. Percentages of native, introduced and endemic species in each political region are shown in Fig. 6. Endemic species belong to 23 genera in four subfamilies: Bambusoideae (7 spp.), Chloridoideae (1 sp.), Danthonioideae (3 spp.), and Pooideae (47 spp.).


Table 2. Number of tribes, subtribes, genera, species, and infraspecific taxa in the eight subfamilies of Poaceae present in Chile.

The arrangement of the genera of Poaceae according to the classification of (Soreng et al., 2009) is shown in Table 3. Under each subfamily each species is mentioned. Introduced species are indicated with and asterisk (\*), and endemic species are bold faced.

### **5.1 BEP clade**

The three subfamilies of the BEP clade grow in Chile (Bambusoideae, Ehrhartoideae, Pooideae) but only two (Bambusoideae and Pooideae) include native species. The BEP clade comprises the majority of the Chilean grasses (ca. 450 spp, ca. 80%).
