306 GrammeCB. \Brachypodium. 



long, lax, longer or shorter than the blade, mouth glabrous, 

 ligule ovate or oblong, hyaline; panicle 1-3 in. long, erect, 

 ovate or oblong, subsecund, loosely branched, rhachis smooth, 

 branches distant, solitary, or binate, spreading, capillary, 

 strict, naked below, lowest often deflexed ; spikelets crowded 

 beyond the middle of the branches, \-\ in. long, sessile or 

 shortly pedicelled, ovate or ovate-oblong, strongly com- 

 pressed; glumes I and II oblong- lanceolate, acute, I i-veined, 

 or with occasionally 2 short lateral veins, keels minutely 

 scaberulous, II rather longer, 3-veined, fig. glumes 3-5, 

 broadly ovate, obtuse, prominently 5-veined, tip and margins 

 membranous, keel and veins below silkily ciliate, keels of 

 palea ciliate; grain oblong. 



Common by roadsides in the montane zone. Nuwara Eliya, Dam- 

 bulla, Balangoda, &c. Spikelets green. 



Europe, Temp. Asia. 



Thwaites says of this, ' possibly introduced.' I suspect it is certainly 

 so, but Trimen does not mark it as such in his Catalogue. Ferguson 

 describes it as so very plentiful in various parts of Dambulla, and 

 especially on the banks of streams not near cultivation, that, though it 

 looks very like a native plant, it may after all be an escape from packets 

 of English seeds. It is indigenous in the Himalaya, but very doubtfully 

 so in the Khasia and Nilgiri Hills. 



75. BRACHTPODIUK, Beauv. 

 Slender, perennial grasses ; stems erect, tufted on a small 

 woody rootstock with filiform root-fibres, leafy, internodes 

 very long; 1. flat, very narrow, finely acuminate; spikelets 

 many-fid., elongate, narrow, terete, solitary and distant on a 

 long filiform flexuous rhachis, not articulate at the base, 

 rhachilla articulate at the base and between the fig. glumes; 

 glumes many, tightly imbricating (spreading in fr.), dorsally 

 rounded, I and II small, narrow, empty, persistent, fig. glumes 

 oblong-lanceolate, narrowed into terminal straight capillary 

 awns, 7-9-veined, veins converging upwards, keels of palea 

 pectinately ciliate; lodicules 2, ciliate; stam. 2-3, anth. linear; 

 ov. bearded at the top, styles short, distant at the base, stigmas 

 plumose, laterally exserted ; grain linear-oblong, concavo- 

 convex, adherent to the palea. — Sp. 5 or 6; 2 in Fl. B. Ind. 



B. sylvaticum, Beauv. Agrost. 101 (1812). 



Thw. Enum. 374. B. scaberrimum, Wight and Arn. Triticum 

 scaberrimum, Steud. Nom., ed. II. ii. 717. C. P. 3253. 



Fl. B. Ind. vii. 362. Host, Gram. Austriac. i. t. 21. 

 Stem 2-4 ft, extremely slender, inclined or drooping 

 above, smooth, shining, internodes 2-4 in.; 1. 3-6 by \-\ in. 



