Gracilea Royleana, Hook. f.
This is a slender annual grass. Stems are very slender, densely tufted, geniculately ascending or erect, 3 to 8 inches long.
The leaf-sheath is either covered with scattered tubercle-based hairs or glabrous. The ligule is a hairy ridge. The nodes are glabrous.
The leaf-blade is filiform, linear-lanceolate, acutely pointed, glabrous or nearly so, margins distantly ciliate, 1 to 2 inches long by 1/16 inch or less.
The inflorescence is 1/2 to 3 inches long and consists of fascicles of spikelets; the rachis is trigonous, smooth, and flexuous.
Fig. 188.—Gracilea Royleana.
1. A fascicle of spikelets; 2. the spikelet without the first and the second glumes; 3,4, 5 and 8. the first, second, third and the fourth glume, respectively; 6. palea of third glume; 7. grain; 9. palea of the fourth glume; 10. rachilla.
The spikelets consist of four glumes. The first glume is rigidly coriaceous, gradually narrowed from a villous base to an erect scabrid awn, 1-nerved. The second glume is also coriaceous, narrowed to an awn but has broad hyaline margins towards the base. The third glume is ovate-lanceolate, scabrid all over the back and with two teeth, one on each side of the awn, paleate; the palea is 2-toothed at the apex and as long as the glume and contains three stamens and the ovary. The grain is oblong brownish. The fourth glume is stalked, shorter than the third glume, distinctly 3-toothed at the apex, scabrid at the back above the middle, paleate and male; the palea is smaller than the glume and 2-toothed at the apex. The rachilla is produced behind the palea and it ends in two small teeth, one being slightly larger than the other.
This grass is a very slender one and it is closely allied to Gracilea nutans. It differs from G. nutans in being an annual and in having filiform leaves, bicuspidate third glume which is scabrid all over the back and a fourth glume distinctly tricuspidate at the apex. This does not occur so widely as Gracilea nutans.