The leaf-blade is flat, narrowly linear-lanceolate, smooth or scabrid, acuminate, base narrowed, 1 to 3-1/2 inches long and 1/16 to 1/8 inch wide.
The inflorescence is a pyramidal panicle, contracted or diffuse, with a leaf very near its base; peduncle is short; branches of the panicle, filiform, angular, flexuous, bearing one or more spikelets and produced as a bristle beyond the last spikelet.
The spikelets are 1/6 to 1/4 rarely 1/3 inch long including the awn, subsessile and somewhat on one side on the branches, obscurely articulate but persistent on the pedicels, pale or green, lanceolate.
There are four glumes in the spikelet. The first glume is hyaline, suborbicular, rounded at the tip and nerveless, 1/30 inch or less. The second glume is membranous, lanceolate, smooth or setosely scabrid on the sides, 9- to 11-nerved, with a long scabrid awn which is sometimes as long as the body of the glume. The third glume is shorter than the second, finely acuminate, or awned, 7-nerved, membranous, paleate and with three stamens and two lodicules; the palea is shorter than the glume, linear-oblong, subacute. The fourth glume is ovate-lanceolate, nerveless, acute, paleate with three stamens, ovary and two lodicules; palea is hyaline, narrow, quarter the length of the third glume. Grain is obovate oblong.
Fig. 104.—Chamæraphis spinescens.
1. Terminal portion of a spike showing the bristle; 2, 3, 4 and 6. the first, second, third and the fourth glume, respectively; 5. palea of third glume with its anthers and lodicules; 7. palea of the fourth glume; 8. ovary; 9. lodicules.
Distribution.—This plant is found at the edges in ponds, tanks and marshes all over the Presidency.