The leaf-blade is green without any glaucousness about it, 1/2 to 6 inches long, 3/16 to 1/4 inch broad, lanceolate or linear-lanceolate, flat, acuminate, slightly coriaceous, many-nerved with a prominent midrib, scaberulous throughout, with a few long scattered deciduous, tubercle-based hairs towards the base, base subcordate, margin cartilaginous, scabrid and finely serrulate.
Fig. 182.—Sporobolus coromandelianus.
1. Portion of a spike showing the verticillate arrangement of the branches and the glands; 2. spikelet; 3. first glume; 4 and 5. second and third glumes; 6. palea of the third glume; 7. anthers and ovary; 8. grain.
The inflorescence is a pyramidal panicle 1-1/2 to 4 inches long, erect on a terete glabrous peduncle 1-1/2 to 6 inches long, the main rachis is slender, erect, striate, glabrous and has glandular streaks just above the insertion of the branches of the lowest verticil. Branches are capillary, stiff and spreading, horizontally verticillate or subverticillate, the lowest whorl consisting of five to sixteen or seventeen branches and the others from three to nine, shining, swollen at the point of insertion and provided with a glandular scar a little above the point of insertion; branchlets are very close, appressed to the rachis of the branch never drooping or spreading, each bearing two to five spikelets.
The spikelets are small, 1/20 to 1/16 inch subsessile or pedicelled, always appressed to the rachis solitary in the upper portions of the branches, and two to five on the branchlets in the lower portion, pale, green or rarely copper coloured, oblong or lanceolate, acute or acuminate, caducous or glumes one and two persistent.
There are three glumes. The first glume is very small, hyaline, ovate, obtuse, occasionally truncate or acute, about one-fifth of the third glume or less. The second glume is membranous, ovate or oblong-lanceolate, acute or acuminate, thinly scaberulous and 1-nerved. The third glume is as long as or a little shorter than the second glume, 1-nerved and paleate. The palea is as long as the glume, oblong, 2-nerved, splitting in two portions between the nerves as soon as the grain is formed. Stamens are three with reddish purple anthers; stigmas are white at first, but turning brown while withering. Lodicules are two, minute. The grain is oblong, pale, brown and obtuse at both ends, embryo about 1/3 of the grain.
This grass flourishes in all kinds of soils all over the Presidency.
Distribution.—Throughout the plains of India and Ceylon. Also in Afghanistan and South Africa.