128 SOUTH INDIAN GRASSES 



i 3. Trachys, Pet 



rs. 



These are softly, villous, diffuse annual grasses. The inflores- 

 cence consists of usually two (rarely three) divaricating spikes on a 

 long peduncle. The rachis is herbaceous, broad fiexuous, jointed 

 and bearing at each joint a solitary globose cluster of two or three 

 perfect i-fiowered glabrous spikelets surrounded by many short 

 spinescent glumes of imperfect ones. The perfect spikelets are 

 4-glumed and the glumes are very unequal. The first glume is 

 minute, tooth-like, nerveless. The second glume is long, linear- 

 lanceolate, membranous, very acute, strongly 3- to 5-nerved. The 

 third glume is the largest, obliquely ovate, or obovate-oblong, 

 cuspidately acuminate, rigidly coriaceous, 9- to many-nerved, 

 paleate or not, empty. The fourth glume is shorter and narrower 

 than the lower one, linear-oblong, acuminate, chartaceous, smooth, 

 dorsally convex, with incurved margins, bearing a bisexual flower, 

 paleate, palea is hyaline as long as the glume, and the margins are 

 inflexed below the middle. Lodicules are very minute or wanting. 

 There are three stamens. The styles are very long with slender 

 stigmas, exserted at the top of the glume. The grain is oblong, 

 compressed, free within the glume and its palea. 



