170 SOUTH INDIAN GRASSES 



24. Apluda, L 



These are tall leafy slender perennial grasses, with branching" 

 stems erect or geniculately ascending from a creeping or decumbent 

 base. The inflorescence is a leafy panicle of many small spikes 

 enclosed in spathiform bracts. Spikes are of one linear joint 

 gibbously bulbous at the base, and jointed on the peduncle at the 

 base of the spathe by a minute curved pedicel. Spikelets are 

 three, a sessile, 2-flowered bisexual one in front, and two pedicelled 

 ones behind, one of which is imperfect and reduced to a glume and 

 the other perfect male or rarely bisexual. The two pedicels are 

 flat, prolonged from one side of the rounded rachis, oblong linear, 

 truncate with a few long hairs along the margin. Sessile spikelets 

 have four glumes. The first glume is chartaceous, linear oblong, 

 many-nerved, shortly bifid at the apex, longer than the other 

 glumes. The second glume is thinner, dorsally gibbous, keeled, 5- 

 to 9-nerved, beaked and minutely bifid. The third glume is 

 hyaline, oblong, acute, 3-nerved, paleate and male. The fourth 

 glume is hyaline, deeply bifid, awned in the sinus, bisexual with a 

 minute palea. The pedicelled spikelet has also four glumes. The 

 first and the second grumes are nearly equal, rather chartaceous. 

 linear-oblong, acute or acuminate, many-nerved. The third glume 

 is hyaline, oblong-lanceolate, 3-nerved, paleate and male. The 

 fourth glume is hyaline, bifid, paleate, I-nerved, female or 

 bisexual. Lodicules are two. Stamens are three. Grain is oblong. 



