l6o 



SOUTH INDIAN GRASSES 



Ischsenium iaxum, L, 



This is a perennial grass with numerous stiff, thick and wiry 

 roots. 



Stems are erect, slender, rising in tufts from a short root-stock, 

 glabrous, leafy towards the base, varying in length from 2 to 3 

 feet. 



The leaf-sheaths are shorter than the internodes usually 

 glabrous, but occasionally with scattered hairs. At the mouth 

 tufts of hairs are present or not. The ligule is a ridge of silky 

 hairs. The nodes are glabrous. 



The leaf-blades are erect, flat, slightly glaucous, linear, narrowed 

 to long capillary tips, 5 to 12 inches long and 1/10 to Ye inch 

 broad, with prominent nerves and scabrid margins. 



The inflorescence is a solitary spike, 2 to 5 inches long, erect and 

 fragile ; the joints and pedicels are compressed, somewhat 2- 

 angled, ciliate with long hairs, and about half as long as the 

 spikelets. 



1%| 



fill 1 

 ■11 



3 4 A-9 s Si* 6 



Fig. 137. — Ischsemum laxuni. 



I. A sessile and a pedicelled spikelet;2. first glume of a sessile spikelet; 3. second 

 glume cf a sessile spikelet; 4 and 5. third and fourth glumes of sessile spikelets ; 4a 

 and 5a. are paiea of third and fourth glumes; 6. ovary ; 7, 8, 9 and 10. glumes of pedi- 

 celled spikelets; 9a and ioa. palea of third and fourth glumes. 



The spikelets are in pairs, one-sessile and one-pedicelled. The 

 sessile spikelets are pale-green, linear-oblong, acuminate with 

 a shortly bearded callus, % to 3/8 of an inch long. There are four 

 glumes in a spikelet. The first glume is chartaceous, oblong-lanceo- 

 late, acuminate, 2-toothed with the teeth ending in two short 

 awns, densely ciliated at the apex on one side, conspicuously 6- 

 (rarely) 7-nerved, the two lateral being very strong and running 

 into the apical teeth and the intermediate four nerves being shorter 

 and not running up to the apex, and on the dorsal surface there is a 

 depression, where it is membranous and the nerves on its sides 

 sometimes anastomosing at the upper third of the glume. The second 



