Eremochloa muricata, Hack.
This is a perennial tufted grass with a woody creeping root-stock. Stems are erect or ascending, slender, strongly compressed, lower parts completely covered by rigid equitant leaves, 6 to 18 inches long or more.
The leaf-sheath is broad, flat, much compressed, glabrous and keeled. The ligule is a short membrane. Nodes are glabrous.
The leaf-blade is linear, glabrous on both sides, 2 to 6 inches long and 3/16 to 1/4 inch broad, with a rounded tip and two unequal lobes.
The spike is solitary, up to 6 inches (or more) in length, joints of the rachis 1/3 to 1/2 the length of the spikelets. Spikelets are solitary, sessile, compressed, secund. The sessile spikelets are 3/16 to 1/6 inch, and consist of four spikelets. The first glume is oblong-lanceolate, dorsally slightly convex, smooth, coriaceous, 7- to 9-nerved, and with pectinate margins consisting of long, spreading, upcurved spines and at the top with subquadrate wings on each side reaching beyond the acute tip. The second glume is chartaceous, oblong-lanceolate, acuminate, usually 5-nerved (and occasionally 3-nerved), the mid-nerve keeled with a narrow wing from below the middle to the base and with hyaline margins. The third glume is oblong-obovate, hyaline, thin, paleate with three yellow anthers and two oblong-cuneate lodicules; palea is narrow, oblong, obtuse. The fourth glume is thin, hyaline, oblong-lanceolate, obtuse, paleate, and bisexual; palea lanceolate, narrow, two-toothed at the apex, with deep purple anthers and stigmas of the same colour. The lodicules are obliquely truncate. Ovary has a reddish spot between the style branches and just at the apex in the fresh state in the bud and in the open flower.
Fig. 138.—Eremochloa muricata.
A. Sessile spikelet; B. sessile and a pedicelled spikelet; 1, 2, 3 and 4. the first, second, third and the fourth glume of the sessile spikelet; 3a and 4a. palea of the third and fourth glumes of the sessile spikelet; 5. ovary, anthers and lodicules.
The pedicelled spikelet is reduced to an inflated body, as long as the sessile spikelet. It is pointed towards both ends, green with anastomosing veins on the outside and membranous, white and nerveless on the other side. The part of the pedicelled spikelet corresponding to the spikelet looks as if the margins of the first and second glumes are confluent all round.