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Value as a fodder.—Readily eaten by stock and believed to be a 
very nutritious grass. ‘“ Buffaloes are said to be very fond of this 
grass,” in India. (Duthie.) 
Habitat and range-—Found in all the colonies except ‘Tasmania, 
usually in damp, often brackish situations. It is an interior species. 
It also occurs in Africa and India, and “in the plains of Northern India 
where water is hable to lodge. T have observed it in great abundance 
in the more depressed portions of the saline usar tracts in the Aligarh 
district.” (Duthie.) 
Sub-tribe vii—Miliex. 
77. Sporobolus. 79. Isachne. 
81. Hriachne. 
SPOROBOLUS. 
Spikelets small, one-flowered, nearly sessile or pedicellate in a narrow 
spikelike or loose and pyramidal panicle, the rhachis of the spikelet 
very short, glabrous, scarcely articulate, not continued beyond the 
flower. 
Glumes three, persistent or separately deciduous, unawned, slightly 
keeled or convex and obscurely nerved, two outer empty ones usually 
unequal ; flowering glume as long or longer. 
Palea about as long as the glume, with two nerves usually prominent, 
and readily splitting between them. 
Styles very short. 
Grain free, readily falling away from the glume, the pericarp loosely 
enclosing the seed or very thin and evanescent. 
Panicle narrow, spikelike, continuous or interrupted, the short erect 
branches flowering from the base. 
Outer and flowering glumes nearly equal. Leaves a 
short, rigid, and spreading ... ; 3% ‘.. 1. S&S. virginicus. 
Outer pianos unequal, shorter than the Aewetings ones. Sieeebves 
rather long 7 2. S. indicus. 
Panicle narrow, loose, with see spaecaiiets eeaared ——— .. 38. 8, diander, 
Panicle loosely pyramidal, the branches spreading in regular distant 
whorls. 
Spikelets loosely pedicellate, minute. 
Leaves rigidly ciliate. Glumes obtuse = vcs w. 4 S&S, pulchellus. 
Leaves not at all or minutely ciliate. Glumes narrow, 
acute .. 5, S&S. Lindley. 
Spikelets nearly sessile, pronded Hae the iiemetohies sae ...6. 8. actinocladus. 
1. Sporobolus virginicus, Kunth. 
Botanical name.—Sporobolus, Greek sporos, a seed, bolos a throw with 
a casting-net, in allusion to the grains, which are on the outside of the 
panicle, as if they had fallen, or been thrown out; virginicus, a 
Latinised word, Virginian, from the American locality whence the 
grass was first described. 
