FESTUCACE^ 



29* 



Eragrostis amabilis, W. & A. 



This is an annual tufted grass with slender, glabrous, erect or 

 geniculately ascending stems, 6 to 18 inches, leafy chiefly at the 

 base. 



The leaf-sheath is glabrous and smooth. The ligule is absent or 

 very obscure. 



The leaf-blade is lanceolate-linear or linear, narrowed from a 

 broad sub-cordate base to an acute tip, smooth and flat. 



The panicle is ovoid-oblong or oblong, open or contracted, spar- 

 ingly branched ; branches are filiform, solitary, ramifying from 

 near the base; rachis and nodes are glabrous. 



Fig. 2 1 8. — Eragrostis amabilis. 



I. A portion of a branch with spikelets ; 2. a single spikelet ; 3 and 4. empty glurr.es ; 5. 

 and 6. a flowering glume and its palea ; 7. lodicules, stamens and ovary ; 8. grain. 



The spikelets are ovate-oblong or linear-oblong, pale or purplish 

 1/6 to Vx inch, up to 50-flowered, rachilla is tough with very short 

 internodes. The glumes are very closely and distichously imbri- 

 cating (and hence spikelets are pretty) ; the empty glumes are sub- 

 equal, ovate-lanceolate, acute or cuspidately acuminate, I-nerved, 

 1/25 to 1/16 inch long. Flowering glumes are broadly ovate or 

 suborbicular, mucronulate, punctulate, with the lateral nerves 

 equi-distant from the margins and the median nerve, and produced 

 far up towards the median nerve ; palea is broad, shorter than its 

 glume, deciduous with it, and with winged and scabrid keels. 

 Stamens are three. Grain is obovoid-ellipsoid, smooth, laterally 

 compressed, reddish-brown. 



This grass is abundant in wet places on the hills and fairly 

 common in the plains though not abundant. 

 Distribution. — Throughout India and Ceylon. 



