ANDROPOGONE/T- 173 



25. Rottboellia, Linn.f. 



These are tall, annual or perennial grasses, with leafy stems 

 and narrow leaves. The spikes are few or many, solitary or 

 panicled, with a jointed usually fragile rachis ; the joints are 

 rounded or compressed, hollowed on one side and excavated at the 

 tip. The spikelets are usually binate, one-sessile closing or sunk 

 in the cavity of the joint and the other pedicelled, smaller than the 

 sessile or rudimentary with the pedicel usually adnate to the joints 

 and equal to or shorter than it. The sessile spikelets are bisexual, 

 1- to 2-flowered, equal to or shorter than the joint and four- 

 glumed. The first glume is coriaceous dorsally flattened, obtuse, 

 margins narrowly incurved. The second glume is thinner than the 

 first, broadly ovate, acute and gibbously convex. The third glume 

 is hyaline, ovate, acute, male or neuter, with a membranous palea. 

 The fourth glume is hyaline, bisexual, broadly ovate, acute with a 

 hyaline, ovate-lanceolate palea. There are three stamens with 

 linear anthers. There are two cuneate lodicules. Styles are two 

 with laterally exserted stigmas. The grain is broadly oblong. 

 The pedicelled spikelets are smaller than the sessile, male or 

 neuter, with four glumes. The first glume is herbaceous, many- 

 nerved, ovate-acute, minutely bifid at the apex. The second, third 

 and the fourth are more or less similar to those of the sessile 

 spikelet. 



KEY TO THE SPECIES. 



Spike solitary, the first glume of the sessile I R Myurus 

 spikelet broadly winged. J 



Spikes fascicled, the first glume of the sessile) ^ exa i ta ta 

 ^pikelet narrowly winged. j 



