The inflorescence consists of four to eight long, thin, slender, slightly drooping, digitately arranged spikes, 2 to 4 inches long on a long smooth peduncle; the rachis is tumid and pubescent at its base, slender, somewhat compressed and scaberulous.
The spikelets are rather small, narrow, greenish or purplish, 1/15 inch long or less, the rachilla is slender, produced to about half the length of the spikelet behind the palea. There are three glumes. The first and the second glumes are lanceolate acute or acuminate, 1-nerved, keeled, keel obscurely scabrid, very unequal, the first glume being always shorter than the second glume. The third glume is obliquely ovate-oblong, chartaceous, longer than the second glume, obtuse or subacute and 3-nerved; the margins and keel with close set clavellate hairs pointed at the apex; palea is chartaceous, 2-keeled, keels obscurely scaberulous and without hairs. There are three stamens with somewhat small purple anthers. Ovary with purple stigmas and two small lodicules. Grain is oblong reddish brown, with a faint dorsal groove.
This species is closely allied to the cosmopolitan species Cynodon dactylon, Pers. and to another new species Cynodon Barberi, Rang. & Tad. described in the "Journal of the Bombay Natural History Society," Volume 24, part IV, page 846, and it is therefore named Cynodon intermedius. (See Journal of the Bombay Natural History Society, Volume 26, part I, pages 304 and 305.) This grass differs from Cynodon dactylon, Pers. (1) in not having underground stems and having only stems creeping and rooting along the surface of the ground, (2) in having less rigid leaves, (3) by having longer, slenderer, somewhat drooping spikes and narrower spikelets, (4) by having the first two glumes always unequal, the second being longer, (5) by having clavellate pointed hairs on the margins and keels of the third glume and (6) by having smaller anthers. Compared with Cynodon Barberi, this plant is more extensively creeping with longer slender branches and the leaves are usually very much longer, and the third glume is longer than the second.
Distribution.—So far, this was collected at Gokavaram in Gōdāvari district No. 8262, in Chingleput No. 11488, in Tinnevelly district Nos. 13129 and 13259, and at Kallar on the Nilgiris No. 13988.
Fig. 194.—Cynodon Barberi.