FESTUCACE/K 



303 



Eragrostis WiHdenoviana, Nees. 



This is a tufted annual. Stems are leafy at the base, erect or 

 geniculately ascending, slender but rigid, varying in length from 

 4 to 18 inches. 



The leaf-sheath is smooth, cylindric, glabrous, outer margin 

 ciliate ; tufts of long hairs are present at the sides of the margin of 

 the sheath, just outside close to the hyaline patch. The ligule is a 

 fringe of short white hairs. The nodes are greenish or with a 

 tinge of purple, glabrous and with a glandular ring below. 



The leaf-blade is lanceolate-linear, pointed, fiat, rigid, the 

 margin is very minutely serrulate, glandular and occasionally also 

 with fine long hairs ; the upper surface is somewhat rough, the 

 lower smooth and both with fine long scattered hairs or glabrous. 



The inflorescence is a stiff open panicle, ovate to oblong, 2 to 

 4% inches long on a slender, terete, glabrous peduncle ; the 

 main rachis is angular, slender with glandular scars, a little below 

 the attachment of the branches ; the branches are capillary, grooved 

 stiff and spreading with small glandular scars just above the node. 



Fig. 224. — Eragrostis WiHdenoviana. 



I. Spikelets ; Ir7. ist glume ; 2 and 2a. the second glume ; 3 and 3a. 



the flowering glume ; 4. palea of the flowering glume ; 5. lodicules, stamens 



and the ovary. 6. grain. 



The spikelets are elliptic-oblong to linear, V% to Va inch by about 

 1/20 inch, greenish or tinged with purple, few to about 25 (or some- 

 times even up to 42) glumed, pedicellate; pedicel is capillary, 

 grooved and angular, with a glandular ring about the middle, 

 spreading sometimes at right angles, rachilla is persistent. 



Emptv glumes are unequal. The first ghnne is hyaline very small, 

 nerveless or one-nerved, subacute or subobtuse ; the second glume 

 is much longer than the first glume, ovate-oblong subacute, keeled, 

 membranous and one-nerved. Flowering glumes vary from about 12 

 to 30 and in some well grown plants as many as 42, broadly ovate, 

 obtuse or subacute, rigidly membranous, three-nerved (one median 



40 



