Distribution.—Fairly common in the plains in the Deccan districts and in the Coromandel coast districts.
42. Eragrostis, Beauv.
These are slender, glabrous, annual or perennial grasses. Stems are usually erect or geniculately ascending, very rarely prostrate. Leaves are narrow. Inflorescences are open or contracted panicles, rarely spikes. Spikelets are usually strongly laterally compressed, 2, to many-flowered and not articulate at the base; rachilla is tough and persistent, jointed above the empty glumes and in some also between the flowering glumes, not produced beyond the last glume. Glumes are many, broad, obtuse, acute or mucronate, never awned, dorsally rounded and keeled; the first and the second glumes are much shorter than the spikelet, equal or unequal, empty, persistent or separately deciduous, 1-nerved or the second 3-nerved, usually membranous. Flowering glumes are imbricating, at length deciduous from the rachilla, 3-nerved, all bisexual or the uppermost and rarely the lowest imperfect, ovate to lanceolate, membranous to chartaceous, usually glabrous, the lateral nerves short not reaching the mid nerve; palea are broad, membranous, deciduous with its glume or persistent on the rachilla with two ciliate smooth or scabrid keels. Stamens are three rarely two. Ovary is glabrous with two styles ending in plumose stigmas. Grain is minute, globose, obgloboid or obovoid, free in the glume and the palea.
KEY TO THE SPECIES.
- A. Spikelets panicled.
- B. Rachilla of spikelets more or
less jointed and breaking up from
above downwards.
- Panicle more or less contracted
and margin of flowering
glumes not ciliate.
- Spikelets 1/20 to 1/6 inch long; grain obovoid; stamens 2; panicle narrow interrupted, 6 to 18 inches long 1. E. interrupta.
- Panicle more or less contracted
and margin of flowering
glumes not ciliate.
- BB. Rachilla of spikelets tough, persistent;
flowering glumes falling
away from base upwards.
- C. Spikelets pedicellate.
- Spikelets flat, ovate-elliptic or oblong, lateral nerves of flowering glumes very prominent and straight, almost percurrent; palea deciduous with their glumes 2. E. amabilis.
- Spikelets less compressed, linear or linear-oblong; lateral nerves less prominent; not fascicled, long pedicellate and divaricate when ripe.
- CC. Spikelets sessile and jointed on the very short densely crowded branchlets of a tall, narrow raceme like panicle, deciduous, acute, much compressed, imbricate and secund 7. E. cynosuroides.
- C. Spikelets pedicellate.
- B. Rachilla of spikelets more or
less jointed and breaking up from
above downwards.
- AA. Spikelets in a long terminal spike. Spikelets distichously spreading, secund, keels of palea winged 8. E. bifaria.
Eragrostis interrupta, Beauv.
(Var. Kœnigii, Stapf.)
This is a tall grass, annual or perennial, with erect stems 1 to 3 feet or more.