Fig. 86.—Panicum Crus-galli.
Panicum Crus-galli, L.
It is a tufted annual with many erect branches growing to a height varying from 2 to 3 or 4 feet and the whole plant is glabrous. Stem is stout or slender, simple or branched.
The leaf-sheath is smooth, glabrous and loose, varying in length from 2 to 6 inches, keeled. The ligule is only a smooth semilunar line without hairs. Nodes are glabrous and the lower nodes bear adventitious roots.
The leaf-blade is narrowly linear-lanceolate, flat, finely acuminate, glabrous or very minutely scabrid with a stout midrib; margin is minutely serrate and with tubercle-based hairs near the base. The blades of the lower leaves are longer than those in the upper and at the junction with the sheath the blade is narrow, just as broad or less than the sheath, and becomes broader about the middle; the length varies from 6 to 10 inches generally, also to 14 inches, and breadth at base 1/4 inch and at the middle 5/16 inch; the upper leaf-blade is generally shorter, varying from 5 to 10 inches and very broad at the base near the sheath, about 7/16 inch and gets gradually narrow upwards. It is convolute when young.
The inflorescence is a compound spike varying in length from 4 to 8 inches, contracted and pyramidal and always erect; the main rachis is stout, angled with very minute hairs on the ridges and with a tuft of bristly hairs and also tubercle-based hairs at the place of insertion of the spikes. Spikes are many (up to 16 or rarely more), simple or branched, the lower ones longer, but getting gradually shorter upwards, and varying in length from 1/2 to 2 inches. The rachis of the spike is angular, with scattered tubercle-based bristly hairs.
