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Glumes, usually three, the outer one, next the rhachis, very minute, 
and sometimes obsolete, the second empty, with five prominent nerves, 
armed with short, rigid, hooked bristles, the third or flowerig glume 
and enclosed palea thin and hyaline. 
Styles distinct, slender. 
Grain enclosed in the thin palea and glume, and rigid outer glume, 
free from them. 
1. Lappago racemosa, Willd. 
Botanical name.—Lappago, from the Latin word for a plant with a 
burr. The Fuller’s Teazle (Dipsacus) is one of the plants supposed 
to have been meant by the Ancients, though there are probably 
others. More indirectly, the name is from the Latin Lappa, the well- 
known Burdock of Europe (Arctiwm lappa), the burry fruits of which 
naughty school boys have collected from remote antiquity to put down 
one another’s backs or to throw at the hair of school-girls. The 
burry appearance of the spikelets of our plant will be seen from the 
figure ; racemosa, with infioresence in the form of a raceme. 
Synonym.—Tragus racemosa, Desf. Authorities differ as to whom 
belongs the credit of this species. Index Kewensis gives Scopoli, 
Duthie gives Hall, Bentham and most Continental botanists quote 
Desfontaines. 
Vernacular name.—The “ Small Burr-grass,’ in contradistinction 
to the “ Large Burr-grass” (Cenchrus australis). 
Where figured.—Duthie, Hackel, Agricultural Gazette. 
Botanical description (B. F1., vii, 507).—An annual, spreading on 
the ground or ascending to from 6 inches to 1 foot in height, usually 
glabrous, except a few rigid cilia bordering the leaves. 
Leaves fiat, with loose sheaths. 
Lrgula small, split into cilia. 
Spikelike panicle or raceme, 2 to 4 inches long, cylindrical and narrow, the very 
short peduncles bearing on their end two sessile narrow spikelets about 2 lines 
long, falling off together with the peduncle as little burrs. 
The second glumes, with their hooked prickles, forming the principal part of the 
spikelets, the acuminate, almost aristate, fruiting glumes remaining enclosed 
within them. 
Value as a fodder—A useful grass for winter and early spring ; 
stock are fond of it. It is quite a small grass, usually not of much 
importance by itself for this reason, and also because it is not one of 
our most abundant grasses, but useful to supplement other fodder 
grasses. Bailey speaks of it as “a good little grass for winter.” 
Mr. W. Coldstream, quoted by Duthie, states that it is common at 
Hissar, India; is too small to stock, but, being “a very nutritious 
grass,” itis much grazed in the rains. Mr. Symonds states that 
cattle will not eat it, and Mr. Lowrie, of Ajmere, India, condemns it 
as a bad fodder grass. 
No chemical analysis appears to haye been made of this grass, but 
with us it is believed to be nutritious, and certainly both cattle and 
sheep eat it readily enough. 
Its burrs are not usually complained of by the wool-grower. 
