Distribution.—The Deccan Peninsula, from the Konkan and Central Provinces southward, and Ceylon.
30. Iseilema, Hack.
These grasses are either annual or perennial, with slender freely branching stems. The inflorescence is a panicle consisting of groups of dissimilar spikelets with compressed, boat-shaped spathes on peduncles. Spikelets are of two kinds, sessile and pedicelled. Each peduncle bears 4-pedicelled male or neuter spikelets in a regular whorl forming an involucel around 1 or 2 sessile bisexual spikelets and 2- or 3-pedicelled male spikelets. Involucral spikelets have 3 or 2 glumes, the first two glumes are somewhat similar, the first 3- to 5-nerved and the second 3-nerved, the third glume is one nerved and hyaline. Lodicules are cuneate and retuse. Anthers yellow dotted or tinged violet. Pedicelled spikelets inside the involucral similar to those of the involucral. Sessile spikelets are bisexual or sometimes female, 4-glumed and awned.
KEY TO THE SPECIES.
- Panicle slender, lax; involucral spikelets 1/6 inch; pedicel slender, terete 1. I. laxum.
- Panicle crowded, leafy; involucral spikelets 1/6 inch or more, very strongly nerved; pedicel harder, firmer and flattened 2. I. anthephoroides.
Fig. 166.—Iseilema laxum.