ON SELECT INDIAN PLANTS. 2~i 



Flowers on a very large terminal panicle, more 

 than two feet long, in the plant before me, and one 

 foot acrcjss in the broadest part ; consisting of nume- 

 rous compound spikes, divided into spikekts, each on 

 a capillary jointed rachis, at the joints of which are the 

 flowerets alternately sessile and pedicelled. Common 

 peduncle many-furrowed, with reddish joints. Vahelet 

 of the corol purple, or light red ; stamens and pistils 

 ruddy; stigmas purple; pedicels of a reddish tint, 

 finely contrasted with the long silvery beard of the 

 calyx. Leaves very long, striated, minutely sawed ; 

 teeth upwards; keel smooth, white within, sheathing 

 the culm ; the mouths of the sheaths thick, set with 

 white hairs. Culm above twenty feet-high; very smooth, 

 round, and light ; more closely jointed and woody near 

 the root, which is thick and fibrous : it grows in large 

 clumps, like the Venu. This beautiful and superb 

 grass is highly celebrated in the Puranas, the Indian 

 God of War having been born in a grove of it, which 

 burst into a flame ; and the gods gave notice of his 

 birth to the nymph of the Pleiads, who descended 

 and suckled the child, thence named Ca'rticeya. The 

 Cdsd , vulgarly Casta, has a shorter culm, leaves 

 much narrower, longer, and thicker hairs, but a smaller 

 panicle, less compounded, without the purplish tints 

 of the Sara* It is often described, with praise, by the 

 Hindu poets for the whiteness of its blossoms, which 

 give a large plain, at some distance, the appearance of 

 a broad river. Both plants are extremely useful to 

 the Indians, who harden the intcrnodal parts of the 



culms, 



