226 GraminecB. \Apluda. 



Central Province. Hatale, Madulkelle (Trimen). 



All India, Burma, the Caucasus, Java, China, Japan, Australia. 



A common and very variable plant in India, of which Hackel has 

 described 5 subspecies and 9 varieties, with the description of none of 

 which do the Ceylon specimens quite agree. The characters I have 

 given, being drawn from only 2 Ceylon specimens in Herb. Peraden., 

 will, no doubt, require modification when more are known. 



38. AFLUOA, L. 

 A tall, slender, perennial, leafy grass ; stems erect, or sub- 

 scandent, branching; 1. narrow, flat, more or less petioled; 

 infl. panicled, leafy, of many small spikes, each in a spathiform 

 bract; spikes deformed, base rounded, often utricular, bearing 

 in front a sessile bisexual spikelet, prolonged above the base 

 into two flat, linear, truncate, parallel arms, one terminated by 

 a solitary minute glume, the other by the upper spikelet; 

 glumes of both spikelets 4, I and II empty, III and IV 

 delicately membranous; glume I of lower spikelet longest, 

 anticous, linear-oblong, coriaceous, rigid, II thinner, tumid, 

 beaked, dorsally gibbous, 7-veined, III oblong, acute, 3-veined, 

 triandrous or neuter, IV short, quadrate, deeply bifid, awned 

 in the sinus, fern, or bisexual, palea of III linear, 2-veined, of 

 IV minute, ovate ; styles short, free, stigmas short, penicillate ; 

 upper spikelet dorsally compressed, glume I oblong, acute, 

 many-veined, herbaceous, margins narrowly incurved, II 

 chartaceous, ovate-lanceolate, acuminate, 3-veined, III and 

 IV oblong, 1 -veined, III triandrous, IV fern, or imperfectly 

 bisexual, paleas of III and IV as in the lower spikelet ; 

 lodicules of all fl. 2, cuneate ; anth. linear ; grain oblong, sub- 

 compressed, embryo large. — Monotypic. 



A most difficult grass to describe intelligibly. Hackel regards the 

 swollen hollow base of the spike as the callus of the lower spikelet, in 

 which view I, supported by Dr. Stapf, do not concur. 



A. varia, Hack. Monogr. Ajidroft. 196 (1! 

 A. aristata, Linn.; Thw. Enum. 364. C. P. 59, 3165, 3166. 

 Fl. B. Ind. vii. 150 (var. aristatd). Lamk. 111. t. 841, f. 1 (A. a?'istata). 

 Beauv. Agrost. t. 23, f. 5 {A. Gryllus). 



Stem densely tufted, geniculately ascending, 1-6 ft. high, 

 erect or branches rambling amongst bushes, stout or slender, 

 sometimes as thick as a goose-quill below, smooth, polished, 

 internodes very long, solid; 1. 4-18 by to - ! m -> narrowed from 

 the middle to a filiform tip, and below it into a long or short 

 slender petiole, flaccid, flat, scaberulous on both surfaces, 



