Fig. 206.—Eleusine indica.
1. A portion of the spike; 2. a spikelet; 3. flowering glumes and their palea with the rachis; 4 and 5. the first two glumes; 6 and 7. flowering glume and its palea; 8. the ovary, stamens and the lodicules; 9 and 10. grain.
The spikelets are variable in size, 1/12 to 1/6 inch, 3 to 5, rarely 6-flowered, quite glabrous, biseriate, pointing upward at an acute angle with the rachis. All the glumes are more or less membranous. The first glume is small, oblong-ovate or oblong, 1-nerved with a scabrid keel. The second glume is twice the size of the first, ovate-oblong, 3-nerved, rarely 3- to 7-nerved, glabrous, shortly mucronate at the acute apex. The third glume and the succeeding flowering glumes are larger than the second, ovate-oblong, subacute, 3-nerved and paleate; palea is shorter than the glume, glabrous. Stamens are three. Lodicules are small and cuneate. The grain is oblong, obtusely trigonous, broadly and shallowly grooved dorsally with concentric minute tubercled ridges covered with a loose pericarp.
This grass is fairly common in somewhat wet places in the plains and low hills.
Distribution.—Throughout India and Ceylon.
Eleusine brevifolia, Br.
This is an annual grass. Stems are creeping and spreading from the root, and ascending from a decumbent base, generally slender and small, but sometimes large and proliferously branched, leafy, 3 to 7 inches long.
The leaf-sheath is compressed and glabrous. The ligule is a very short membrane, ciliate at the margin or obsolete.
The leaf-blade is linear, acute, with a subcordate or rounded base 1/2 to 2 inches long and 1/8 to 1/6 inch broad.
The spikes are usually many, sessile and crowded in globose heads, varying in diameter from 1/3 to 2/3 inch.