244 



SOUTH INDIAN GRASSES 



Gracilea nutans, Koen. 



This grass is a perennial with stout fibrous roots. Stems are 

 stout, leafy and creeping below, ascending later ; naked and 

 slender above, 4 to 10 inches long. 



The leaf -sheath is glabrous, shorter than the blade, coriaceous 

 and open above. The ligule is a ridge of hairs. 



The leaf-blade is lanceolate, narrowed from the rounded or sub- 

 cordate base to the acute tip, coriaceous, % to I inch long ; margins 

 are ciliate with tubercle-based cilia ; the surfaces with or without 

 a few scattered long tubercle-based hairs. 



The inflorescence is I to 3 inches long, consisting of distant 

 sessile fascicles of four to six spikelets ; the rachis of the spike 

 is flexuous ; the rachis of the fascicles ends in three subulate empty 

 glumes. 



The spikelets are closely appressed and each one has four glumes. 

 The first and the second glumes are empty, 2/5 inch long, rigidly 



7 I l k k 

 ' m, if A 



Fig. 187. — Gracilea nutans. 



1. A portion of the inflorescence with three fascicles of spikelets ; 2. a spikelet without 

 the first glume ; 3, 4, 5 and S. the first, second, third and the fourth glume, respectively ; 

 6 and io. palea of the third and the fourth glume, respectively; 7. lodicules, stamens 

 and the ovary ; 9. the rachilla produced beyond the fourth glume. 



coriaceous, gradually narrowed from a villous base into an erect, 

 scabrid awn, i-nerved. The second glume has broad hyaline 

 margins towards the base. The third glume is about 1/10 inch, 

 ovate, with a short scabrid awn at the tip, scaberulous at the back 

 just above the middle, 3-nerved, paleate and with both stamens 

 and ovary ; palea is narrow, lanceolate, as long as the glume and 

 2-toothed at the tip. The grain is oblong, brownish. The fourth 

 glume is about half as long as the third glume, with a short, stout, 

 smooth rachilla, ovate-lanceolate, terminated at the tip by two 

 teeth and a short awn, scabrid above the middle at the back, 

 paleate and male ; palea is shorter than the glume ; the rachilla is 

 produced beyond the fourth glume and terminates in a thickening. 



This grass grows in open somewhat dry loamy and laterite soils 

 in the East Coast districts. 



Distribution. Mysore and the Carnatic and Ceylon. 



