The racemes are stout, cylindrical below and very narrow and with imperfect spikelets above, joints are smooth and rounded dorsally. The sessile spikelets are as long as the joint or slightly shorter and has four glumes. The first glume is ovate-oblong, thickly coriaceous, smooth at the back with a truncate base and a transverse ridge at the base inside, many-nerved, with very narrow inflexed margins and very narrow wings at the top, the apex is obtuse or emarginate. The second glume is equal to the first glume in height, chartaceous, gibbously convex, broadly ovate, acute, 9- to 11-nerved, and with a short wing to the keel at the apex. The third glume is oblong or elliptic-oblong, rigid with a hyaline centre and coriaceous at the sides, 3-nerved, paleate and with three stamens; palea is as long as the glume, coriaceous with inflexed hyaline margins. Lodicules are cuneate, with toothed edge. The fourth glume is a little shorter than the third, ovate from a broad base, hyaline and acute, 1-nerved, paleate and usually with an ovary and two lodicules: palea is hyaline, as long as the glume. but narrower, nerveless. Lodicules are quadrate; grain somewhat large oblong and compressed. The pedicelled spikelets are usually imperfect.
This grass occurs all over the Presidency in cultivated dry fields.
Distribution.—Throughout the lower hills and plains of India and in Australia and Africa.
26. Mnesithea, Kunth.
These are erect slender perennial grasses with narrow leaves. The spikes are solitary and slender, with a fragile, articulated rachis; the joints are terete, ribbed, all but a few upper with two equal and similar sessile spikelets, sunk in sub-opposite oblong cavities, separated by a hyaline septum, and with sometimes a minute glume representing a third spikelet (the pedicelled) on the upper margin of the joint. The sessile spikelets are one-flowered, nearly as long as the internode. There are four glumes in the spikelet. The first glume closing the mouth of the cavity in the joint is obliquely oblong, obtuse, smooth with narrowly incurved margins. The second and the third glumes are as long as the first, obtuse and hyaline. The third glume is empty, paleate or not. The fourth glume is rather small, oblong, obtuse, bisexual and palea shorter than the glume. The lodicules are not present. The stamens are three. Ovary is very small with stigmas not exserted. The grain is narrowly oblong compressed. The pedicelled spikelets are confined to the upper 1-flowered joints of the spike and their pedicels are confluent with the walls of the joints and their margins are marked by two ribs. The first glume is very minute and the other glumes are absent.
Mnesithea lævis, Kunth.
This is an erect slender perennial grass with smooth simple or branched stems varying in height from 2 to 4 feet.
The leaf-sheath is terete, tight, glabrous. The ligule is a short toothed membrane. Nodes are glabrous.