A Handbook of Some South Indian Grasses

by K. Rangachari; C. Tadulinga Mudaliyar

Chloris virgata, Sw.

This grass seems to be a perennial. The stems are somewhat flattened, erect, tufted, leafy at the base and occasionally with creeping stems rooting at the lower nodes varying in length from 10 to 21 inches.

The leaf-sheaths are glabrous, compressed, upper sheaths somewhat inflated; mouth of the sheath is bearded with long hairs in the leaves of young branches and quite glabrous when old and in flower-bearing branches, margins are thin and membranous. The ligule is a thin narrow membranous ridge.

The leaf-blades are rather narrow, linear, flat, acute, glabrous when old, and with scattered long hairs in the leaves of young branches, varying in length from 2 to 9 and sometimes even 15 inches and in breadth about 1/8 inch or less.

Fig. 198.—Chloris virgata.
1. Spikelet; 2 and 3, the first and second glumes; 4 and 5. the third glume and its palea; 6. lodicules, stamens and the ovary; 7. the fourth glume; 8. grain.

The inflorescence consists of from four to nine spikes digitately arranged on a long peduncle and the leaf-sheath enclosing the inflorescence is somewhat large and inflated. Spikes are 1 to 1-1/2 inches long with fine, angular rachis, scaberulous in the edges.

Spikelets are about 1/10 inch, 2-awned, shortly stalked and consist of only four glumes. The first glume is small lanceolate, glabrous, with the keel scaberulous, 1-nerved. The second glume is about one and a half times the first, oblong-lanceolate, 2-fid at the apex, glabrous, but the keel scaberulous and nerve produced between the lobes into a short scaberulous awn. The third glume is oblong-ovate, lanceolate, 2-fid at the apex, and awned in the sinus, awn being about 1/4 inch long bearded at the base, the margins are slightly ciliate up to about the middle and then closely ciliate with long hairs almost to the tip, but not to the tip; on the two sides of the dorsal nerve there are two shallow grooves one on each side, with short scattered appressed hairs; the palea is narrow oblanceolate, minutely 2-fid at the tip, with margins folded inward and embracing the stamens, ovary and the lodicules. Grain is narrow, trigonous, oblong, translucent and shining. The fourth glume is borne by a short rachilla which is about 1/3 the length of the third glume or less, shorter than the third, cuneiform, empty and awned.