Fig. 223.—Eragrostis Willdenoviana.
Eragrostis Willdenoviana, Nees.
This is a tufted annual. Stems are leafy at the base, erect or geniculately ascending, slender but rigid, varying in length from 4 to 18 inches.
The leaf-sheath is smooth, cylindric, glabrous, outer margin ciliate; tufts of long hairs are present at the sides of the margin of the sheath, just outside close to the hyaline patch. The ligule is a fringe of short white hairs. The nodes are greenish or with a tinge of purple, glabrous and with a glandular ring below.
The leaf-blade is lanceolate-linear, pointed, flat, rigid, the margin is very minutely serrulate, glandular and occasionally also with fine long hairs; the upper surface is somewhat rough, the lower smooth and both with fine long scattered hairs or glabrous.
Fig. 224.—Eragrostis Willdenoviana.
1. Spikelets; 1a. 1st glume; 2 and 2a. the second glume; 3 and 3a. the flowering glume; 4. palea of the flowering glume; 5. lodicules, stamens and the ovary; 6. grain.
The inflorescence is a stiff open panicle, ovate to oblong, 2 to 4-1/2 inches long on a slender, terete, glabrous peduncle; the main rachis is angular, slender with glandular scars, a little below the attachment of the branches; the branches are capillary, grooved stiff and spreading with small glandular scars just above the node. The spikelets are elliptic-oblong to linear, 1/8 to 3/4 inch by about 1/20 inch, greenish or tinged with purple, few to about 25 (or sometimes even up to 42) glumed, pedicellate; pedicel is capillary, grooved and angular, with a glandular ring about the middle, spreading sometimes at right angles, rachilla is persistent.