159 



Value as a fodder. — Readily eaten by stock and believed to be a 

 very nutritious grass. " Buffaloes are said to be very fond of this 

 grass/' in India. (Duthie.) 



Habitat and range. — Found in all the colonies except Tasmania, 

 usually in damp, often brackish situations. It is an interior species. 

 It also occurs in Africa and India, and " in the plains of Northern India 

 where water is liable to lodge. I have observed it in great abundance 

 in the more depressed portions of the saline usar tracts in the Aligarh 

 district." (Dutliie.) 



Sub- tribe Hi . — Mi Hex . 



77. Sporobolus. 79. Isachne. 



81. Eriachne. 



77. SPOEOBOLUS. 



Spikelets small, one-flowered, nearly sessile or pedicellate in a narrow 

 spikelike or loose and pyramidal panicle, the rhachis of the spikelet 

 very short, glabrous, scarcely articulate, not continued beyond the 

 flower. 



Glumes three, persistent or separately deciduous, unawned, slightly 

 keeled or convex and obscurely nerved, two outer empty ones usually 

 unequal ; flowering glume as long or longer. 



Palea about as long as the glume, with two nerves usually prominent, 

 and readily splitting between them. 



Styles very short. 



Grain free, readily falling away from the glume, the pericarp loosely 

 enclosing- the seed or very thin and evanescent. 



Panicle narrow, spikelike, continuous or interrupted, the short erect 

 branches flowering from the base. 

 Outer and flowering glumes nearly equal. Leaves usually- 

 short, rigid, and spreading ... ... ... ... ... 1. S. virginicus. 



Outer glumes unequal, shorter than the flowering ones. Leaves 



rather long ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 2. S. indicus. 



Panicle narrow, loose, with short spreading scattered branches ... 3. S. diander. 

 Panicle loosely pyramidal, the branches spreading in regular distant 

 whorls. 

 Spikelets loosely pedicellate, minute. 



Leaves rigidly ciliate. Glumes obtuse . - ... . . . 4. S. pulchellus. 



Leaves not at all or minutely ciliate. Glumes narrow, 



acute 5. S. Lindleyi. 



Spikelets nearly sessile, crowded along the branches 6. S. actinocladus. 



1. Sporobolus virginicus, Kunth. 



Botanical name. — Sporobolus, Greek sporos, a seed, bolos a throw with 

 a casting-net, in allusion to the grains, which are on the outside of the 

 panicle, as if they had fallen, or been thrown out ; virginicus, a 

 Latinised word, Virginian, from the American locality whence the 

 grass was first described. 



