66 



SOUTH INDIAN GRASSES 



Panicum Isachne, Roth 



This is an annual grass usually growing in tufts with fine 

 fibrous roots and many slender spreading branches, all of them 

 at first creeping and horizontal, rooting at the nodes and then 

 becoming erect and varying in length from I to 2 feet. 



Stems are very slender, glabrous or covered with scattered 

 hairs, purplish or pale green, and branching freely towards the 

 base. 



The leaf-sheath is shorter than the internodes, green or purplish, 

 striate, externally hairy with scattered bulbous-based hairs, 

 varying in length from ^ to 3 inches, the outer margin of the 

 sheath is ciliate with long hairs and at the mouths sometimes long 

 hairs are present, especially when the leaves are young. The 

 ligule is merely a dense fringe of long hairs. Nodes are tumid, 

 purplish, covered with long hairs. 



The leaf-blade is fiat but convolute when young, lanceolate or 

 linear-lanceolate, acuminate, base rounded and margin with 

 minute serrations. It is glabrous or occasionally hairy with 

 scattered, tubercle-based, deciduous hairs, and varying in length 

 from I to 3 inches generally (sometimes in well-grown plants it is 

 5 inches) and in breadth from £6 to 54 inch. The midrib is promi- 

 nent though slender at the base and four veins are present on each 

 side with five or six smaller ones between them. 



Fig. Si. — i'anicum Isachne. 



i and ia. Front and back view of a spike ; 2 and 2a. back and front views of a 

 spikelet ; 3 and 4. the first and the second glume, respectively ; 5 and 5a. the third 

 glume and its palea; 6 and 6a. the fourth illume and its palea : 7. lodicules. anthers 

 and ovary ; cS. grain. 



The inflorescence is an erect, narrow panicle consisting of spikes 

 varying in number from 5 to 12 and in length from 2 to 3 inches. 

 The spikes are erect, pressed to the very slender rachis, longer than 

 the internodes of the main rachis, stalked or sessile, mostly simple 

 but sometimes the lower dividing into two or three branches, Y 2 to 



