A Handbook of Some South Indian Grasses

by K. Rangachari; C. Tadulinga Mudaliyar

• Glumes I and II shorter than III.
  • Underground stems present.
    • Hairs on the margins and keels of glume III pointed and not clavate. 1. C. dactylon.
  • Underground stems absent.
    • Hairs on the margins and keels of glume III clavellate and pointed at the apex. 2. C. intermedius.
• Glume I shorter than II but II equal to or longer than III—
  • Hairs on the margins and keels of glume III clavellate and rounded at the apex. Underground stems absent. 3. C. Barberi.

Fig. 190.—Cynodon dactylon.

Cynodon dactylon, Pers.

This is a perennial grass with creeping branches and also with numerous deeply penetrating underground stems covered with white scale-leaves. Stems are prostrate, widely creeping and rooting at the nodes and forming matted tufts with slender, erect or ascending flowering branches, 3 to 12 inches high.

The leaf-sheath is somewhat tight, glabrous, membranous at the mouth which is villous. The ligule is a fine ciliate rim.

The leaf-blade is soft, narrowly linear, finely acute, acuminate or pungent, somewhat glaucous, conspicuously distichous at the base of the stem and, in non-flowering branches, scabrid along the margins.