64 CROP GRASS. 



or five , leaves hairy at the base. It is a trouble- 

 some annual weed, introduced from Europe. Found 

 also in Illinois. 



22. ELEUSINE. Crop Grass. 



Spikelets two to six flowered, overlapping each other 

 in close spikes on one side of a flattish rachis; spikes dig- 

 itate, clustered ; glumes awnless and pointless ; stamens 

 three ; palea awnless and pointless. 



CROP GRASS, CRAB GRASS, WIRE GRASS, CROW'S-FOOT 

 (Eleusine Indica). Stems ascending, flattened, branch- 

 ing at the base ; spikes two to five, greenish. 



This is an annual, and flowers through the season, 

 growing from eight to fifteen inches high, and forming a 

 fine green carpeting in lawns and yards. It is indige- 

 nous in Mississippi, Alabama, and adjoining states, and 

 serves for hay, grazing, and turning under as a fertilizer. 

 It grows there with such luxuriance, in many sections, as 

 never to require sowing, and yields a good crop where 

 many of the more northern grasses would fail. 



23. LEPTOCHLOA. Slender Grass. 



Spikelets three to many flowered, loosely spiked on 

 one side of a long, thread-like rachis ; glumes membra- 

 naceous, keeled, sometimes awl-pointed ; lower palea 

 three-nerved, and larger than the upper. Stamens two 

 or three. 



POINTED SLENDER GRASS (Leptochloa mucronata) is an 

 annual, growing from two to three feet high, and flow- 

 ering in August. Sheaths hairy; spikes from twenty 

 to forty, two to four inches long, in a long panicle-like 

 raceme ; glumes pointed, about equalling the three or 

 four awnless flowers. Found in fields from Virginia to 

 Illinois, and southward. 



CLUSTERING SLENDER GRASS (Leptochloa fascicularis). 

 Spikelets seven to eleven flowered, longer than the 



