The panicle is strict, erect, narrowly pyramidal, often interrupted, varying in length from 6 to 18 inches and breadth from 1/2 to 2 inches. Branches are many, short, crowded, densely clothed from the base with sessile, imbricating, much compressed deflexed spikelets.
Fig. 226.—Eragrostis cynosuroides.
1. A branch with spikelets; 2. flowering glumes with their palea; 3 and 4. empty glumes; 5 and 6. flowering glume and its palea.
The spikelets are secund, biseriate, shining, pale brown, 1/2 inch long, up to 30-flowered. The empty glumes are unequal, the second being the larger. The flowering glumes are coriaceous, ovate, acute as long as the second or slightly longer, paleate, palea is sub-coriaceous and shorter than the glume. Stamens are three. Grain is obliquely ovoid, laterally compressed.
This grass grows usually in moist sandy loams, sand dunes, and is very common on the Coromandel coast and in the Deccan Districts.
Distribution.—Throughout in the plains of India.
Eragrostis bifaria, Wight Ex Steud.
This is a densely tufted perennial grass. Stems are simple, erect, glabrous, somewhat compressed, 1 to 3 feet high, and the base clothed with the old remains of the leaf-sheaths.