A'hdropogon!\ GrCMnifieCB . 22 7 



margins scabrid, midrib slender, pale, sheaths long, smooth, 

 mouth not auricled, ligule chartaceous, oblong, lacerate ; infl. 

 very variable, of spikelets clustered on short peduncles, which 

 clusters are solitary, or few, or very numerous and arranged 

 in elongate bracteate very contracted interrupted leafing 

 panicles, rhachis of infl. slender, glabrous or slightly scabrid; 

 tracts of spikelets \-\ in. long, sessile or pedicelled, cymbi- 

 form, green, striate, tip aristulate, rarely long-awned or with a 

 short green limb; spikes longer or snorter than the bracts, 

 base rounded, suddenly contracted into a slender pedicel, 

 base of spike sometimes forming a large thin-walled utricle, 

 arms subfalcate, thinly coriaceous, glabrous or ciliate above; 

 sessile spikelet with the gibbous back of glume II placed 

 between the arms, its sides not incurved, its beak scabrid ; 

 glume I of sessile spikelet spreading, strict or recurved, bi- 

 cuspidate, margins hyaline, glume IV of the same 3-5 -veined 

 below the sinus, the lateral veins arching and meeting the 

 median at the insertion of the awn, column of awn twisted, 

 palea ovate, obtuse, wrapped round the ov, veins 2, very 

 short, or o. 



Abundant up to 4000 ft. elevation. Fl. July. 



All India, and eastward to the Pacific Islands. 



Hackel divides the forms of this protean plant into two principal sub- 

 species : one, A. mutica, Linn., which is rarely awned; the other, A. 

 artstata, Linn., with awned glume IV of the sessile spikelet, to which 

 all the Ceylon specimens are referable, though both are so common in 

 India that mutica will probably be found in the Island. Of artstata 

 Hackel has 4 varieties, to the first of which, artstata proper, the Ceylon 

 specimens are referable ; the others have more or less hairy bracts or 

 glumes, or both, and further differ in the size of the utricular base of the 

 spike and other characters. No fewer than 15 names have been given 

 to forms of this grass. 



39. ANDSOPOGON, Z. 



Grasses of various habit; 1. usually narrow; infl. of 

 solitary, binate, digitate, fascicled, or panicled spikes, 

 which are in subgen. Clirysopogon sometimes reduced to 

 3 spikelets, rhachis articulate, more or less fragile; spike- 

 lets in alternate pairs, a sessile bisexual, and a pedicelled 

 male or neuter, one or more lowest in the spike sometimes 

 neuter and differing in form from the upper; sessile spikelets 

 i-fld., callus long or short; glumes 3 or 4, I coriaceous or 

 chartaceous, 2-keeled, awn o, II thinner, concave, keeled, 

 rarely shortly awned, III hyaline or o, neuter, IV hyaline, 

 awned, often reduced to the dilated base of the awn, bisexual, 



