•506 



SOUTH INDIAN GRASSES 



Eragrostis cynosuroides, Beauv. 



This is a tall perennial grass freely branching from the base 

 and with stout stolons covered with shining sheaths. The root- 

 stock is stout and creeping. The stems are tufted, smooth, erect, 

 with fascicles of leaves at the base I to 3 feet high. 



The leaf-sheath is glabrous, slightly compressed, distinctly keeled, 

 as broad or slightly broader than the blade at the mouth. Ligule 

 is a line of short hairs. 



The leaf-blade is linear, rigid, glabrous, acuminate with 

 tips, and finely serrulate margins, varying in length from 

 inches and the basal leaves sometimes reaching 20 inches. 



The panicle is strict, erect, narrowly pyramidal, often inter- 

 rupted, varying in length from 6 to 18 inches and breadth from % 

 to 2 inches. Branches are many, short, crowded, densely clothed 

 from the base with sessile, imbricating, much compressed defiexed 

 spikelets. 



filiform 

 2 to 10 



Fig. 226. — Eragrostis cynosuroides. 



1. A branch with spikelets ; 2. flowering glumes with their palea; 3 and 

 4. emtpy glumes ; 5 and 6. flowering glume and its palea. 



The spikelets are secund, biseriate, shining, pale brown, Y 2 inch 

 long, up to 30-fiowered. The empty glumes are unequal, the second 

 being the larger. The flowering glumes are coriaceous, ovate, 

 acute as long as the second or slightly longer, paleate, palea is 

 sub-coriaceous and shorter than the glume. Stamens are three. 

 Grain is obliquely ovoid, laterally compressed. 



This grass grows usually in moist sandy loams, sand dunes, 

 and is very common on the Coromandel coast and in the Deccan 

 Districts. 



Distribution. — Throughout in the plains of India. 



