ANDROPOGONE/h 



Apluda varia, Hack. 



171 



This is a tall leafy perennial grass with wiry roots. Stems are 

 densely tufted, branched, geniculately ascending, erect or the 

 branches scandent. solid, smooth and polished, I to 7 feet. 



The leaf-sheath is glabrous or slightly hairy, the upper ones 

 being shorter and dilated into spathes with subulate tips. The 

 ligule is a short stiff slightly lacerate membrane. 



The leaf-blade is linear-lanceolate, finely acuminate, base 

 narrowed into a petiole, scaberulous on both the surfaces. 



The inflorescence consists of simple spikes, each in a spathiform 

 bract, and forming clusters terminating the stem and the branches. 

 The spikes have their bases rounded and swollen and each spike 

 consists of a sessile bisexual spikelet and two flat linear, truncate, 

 parallel pedicels, one terminated by a spikelet, and the other by a 

 solitary minute glume. Spathes are V% to */j inch long, sessile or 

 pedicellate, green, cymbiform, with subulate tips. 



FlG. l-)2. — Apluda varia. 

 A. A cluster of spikes containing five spikes with their spathes ; B and C. spikes. 



The sessile as well as the pedicelled spikelets have four glumes. The 

 sessile spikelets are V% to 1/5 inch long. The first glume is spreading 

 or erect, chartaceous, many-nerved, two-toothed at the apex and 

 with narrow hyaline margins from about the middle to the apex. 

 The second glume is compressed, dorsally gibbous, keeled, 7-nerved. 

 The third glume is hyaline, oblong-lanceolate, 3-nerved, paleate 

 with three stamens ; pale a is narrow. The fourth glume is shorter 

 than the third, deeply 2-fid and awned in the cleft, bisexual or 

 female, 3-to 3-nerved below the cleft, the lateral nerves arching 

 and meeting the mid-nerve just at the cleft, with a small ovate 

 palea. There are two lodicules. The pedicelled spikelets are dorsally 

 compressed. The first glume is lanceolate, oblong, subacute, 

 many-nerved, coriaceous and glabrous. The second glume is as long 

 as the first, many-nerved, lanceolate-oblong, coriaceous and 

 glabrous. The third glume is hyaline, shorter than the second. 

 3-nerved, paleate and with three stamens. The fourth glume is 

 shorter than or equal to the third, hyaline, i-nerved rarely with 

 two short lateral nerves, female or imperfect. Lodicules are two. 



