Fig. 150.—Andropogon pumilus.
Andropogon pumilus, Roxb.
It is a tufted annual with numerous radiating branches, growing on all directions, bent below and erect above; they vary in length from 6 inches to 18 inches, but sometimes when growing under favourable conditions attain the length of 2-1/2 feet. The stem is slender, green, or pale reddish in the exposed portions and pale in parts covered by sheaths slightly flattened, smooth.
The leaf-sheaths are smooth, compressed, distinctly keeled. The ligule is a short, truncate, white, glabrous membrane. The nodes are glabrous.
The leaf-blade is linear, finely acuminate, glabrous, but sometimes somewhat scabrid along the nerves and with scattered long delicate hairs above especially when young, varying in length from 1 to 7 inches and 1/10 to 1/8 inch in breadth.
The inflorescence consists of paired spikes with very slender peduncles arising from flattened, glabrous, acuminate spathes, varying in length from 1/2 to 1-1/4 inches. The spikes are spreading and one of them always slightly longer than the other, reddish or pale green, 1/2 to 1 inch long; the rachis consists of five to eight flat joints broadened at the top and ending in a cup, densely ciliate on both the margins, but hairs on one margin are shorter than those on the other. Each joint bears a sessile and a pedicelled spikelet.
Fig. 151.—Andropogon pumilus.
1. A portion of the spike to show the arrangement of the spikelets; 1. the first glume of the sessile spikelet; 2. second glume of the sessile spikelet; 3 and 4. third and fourth glumes of the sessile spikelet; 5. anthers, lodicules and the ovary; A, B and C. the three glumes of the pedicelled spikelets.