A Handbook of Some South Indian Grasses

by K. Rangachari; C. Tadulinga Mudaliyar

This is a stout, rigid, much branched, gregarious and dioecious grass, flourishing in sand on the sea coast. Leaves are long, narrow rigid, involute, spreading and recurved and thickly coriaceous. Male spikelets are 1- to 2-flowered, subsessile, distichous, jointed on rigid peduncled spikes, which are collected in umbels and surrounded by spathaceous leafy bracts. The spikelets have four glumes. The first two glumes are empty. The third and the fourth paleate and triandrous and sometimes the former is empty. Female spikelets are collected in large globose heads of stellately spreading very long rigid rod-like processes surrounded by shorter subulate bracts. Each spikelet is solitary, and articulate at the very base of a rachis, lanceolate, 1-flowered. There are four glumes. The first three glumes are as in the male spikelets, but larger. The third is paleate, empty. The fourth glume has a female flower. The lodicules are large and nerved. Styles are long, free, with short, feathery stigmas. Grain free within the hardened glumes.

Spinifex squarrosus, L.

A perennial littoral dioecious grass forming bushes. Stems are glaucous, smooth, solid, woody, thick below, freely branching, 5 to 10 feet long or more.

The leaf-sheath is smooth, imbricating, 1/2 to 1-1/2 inches long. The ligule is a row of stiff long hairs.

The leaf-blade is narrow, rigid, thickly coriaceous, concavo-convex tapering from the base to the tip, spreading and recurved, 4 to 6 inches long.

The male inflorescence consists of several spikes, 1 to 3 inches long, forming umbels, with membranous leafy spathaceous bracts which are shorter than the spikes.

The spikelets are usually 2-flowered, smooth, articulate on short peduncles, distichous, 1/3 to 1/2 inch long.

There are four glumes. The first glume is shorter than the second, ovate, obtuse, 7- to 9-nerved. The second glume is similar to the first, but longer. The third and the fourth glumes are longer than the second glume, 5- to 7-nerved, paleate and triandrous; palea of both are lanceolate with ciliate keels.