PLATE 143. 



DiGiTARiA TENUIELOEA (Beauv; Agrost. 51). Fl. Cap, Vol, VII. p. 380, 



Annual or Sub-Perennial. — Culms fascicled, very slender, prostrate and 

 rooting, or ascending or sub-erect, ^-l^ foot long, glabrous, many-noded, often 

 braiiche*!. Sheaths r-ather lax, the lower more or less hairy, sometimes bearded at 

 the nodes ; ligules very short, membranous. Blades lanceolate to linear, acute, 

 ■2-4 inches long, spreading, flat, glabrous, rarely hairy. 



Racemes usually 2-3, rarely more, very slender, 1-3 inches long, erect or 

 spreading. Rhachis finely linear, margins scabrid. Pedicels 2-rarely 3-nate, 

 unequal, tips discoid. 



Spikelets adpressed to the rhachis, the superposed distant by rather less than 

 their own length, elliptic-oblong, acute or subacute, f-f line long, pale or purplish! 

 Glumes, lower- 0; upper 5-3-nerved, very finely and adpressedly silky with wrinkled 

 hairs. Valves, loiver- similar and subequal to the upper glume, flat, 7-nerved ; 

 iipper subchartaoeous, ovate-oblong, slightly shorter than the lower, flaps of pale 

 •overlapping below. Anthers |- line long. 



Habitat : — Natal. Near Durban, Drege ; Durban Flat, Bnchauan, 35 ; near 

 Umpumulo, Buchanan, 20'4a ; and without precise locality, Gerrard, 588. 



Drawn from Buchanan's 204a. 



Through the tropics of the Old World. 



Fig. 1, Ligule ; 2, upper ghime ; 3, lower valve ; 4, u])per valve ; 5, pale ; 6, rliachis 

 with pedicels. A/l enluri/cd. 



