The pedicelled spikelets are as long as the sessile and the pedicels are flattened and with long rufous hairs on both the margins. There are four glumes. The first glume is lanceolate, acute and awned between two teeth, 7-nerved and scaberulous. The second glume is lanceolate, acuminate, with thinly ciliate hyaline margins, 3-nerved. The third glume is shorter than the second, narrow, hyaline, ciliate at the margins, 2-nerved. The fourth glume also is small, hyaline, ciliate, and 1-nerved. There are three stamens and two lodicules.
This grass is found growing all over the Presidency on the plains and even on low hills. It grows into a tall plant in rich soils and remains stunted in poor, dry and rocky soils. Cattle eat this grass.
Distribution.—Throughout India and Ceylon and in Africa.
Andropogon caricosus, L.
This is a perennial grass more or less tufted in habit and closely allied to Andropogon annulatus, Forsk.
Stems are erect or decumbent below or ascending from a creeping base, rooting at the nodes, smooth, glabrous and much branched, varying in height, from 1 to 2 feet; branches are short, slender and sometimes even capillary, with nodes bearded or not in branches ending in solitary spikes, and completely glabrous when they end in binate spikes.
The leaf-sheaths are glabrous, rather compressed, striate, shorter than the internodes. Ligule is membranous, short, very finely ciliolate or not.
The leaf-blade is linear, finely acuminate, sparsely hairy, sometimes with tubercle-based hairs, becoming glabrous when old with scaberulous margins 2 to 8 inches by 1/10 to 1/6 inch, base rounded mostly with a few long hairs.