?LATE 47^. 



Setaria aurea, a. Braun. (Fl. Cap , Vol, VII., p. 426). 



Nat. Order GramineBe. 



Perennial or annual or at least flowering the flrst year. Rhizome short, 

 oblique, covered with the remains of old scales and sheaths, sometimes with 

 subglobose innovation buds. 



Culms suberect or ascending, often geniculate, 2 to 6 feet long, usually strongly 

 compressed or even ancipitous below, strongly striate and scabrid or puberulous 

 below the panicle, otherwise glabrous and smooth, 3 to 7-noded ; internodes 

 exserted except the lowest, uppermost usually very long and slender ; sheaths 

 striate, glabrous or softly hirsute, lower compressed, keeled, bases often persistent 

 and breaking up into fibres ; ligule a shortly and densely ciliate rim; blades 

 linear, long tapering to an acute point, ^ to 1 J foot by 1 J to 4 lines, or rarely 6 

 lines, flat, rather firm, sometimes rather rigid and more or less involute, glabrous 

 or scantily hairy towards the base, scaberulous or almost smooth. 



Panicle erect, straight or subflexuous, cylindric, 2 inches to more than 1 foot 

 long, 2^ to 3 lines thick (exclusive of the bristles), very dense, very bristly, usually 

 orange-coloured or reddish ; axis slender, minutely villous or puberulous ; branches 

 reduced to a subsessile one-sided involucre, consisting of 6 to 10 slender scabrid 

 bristles, 2 to 7 lines long, yellowish to bright orange or reddish, and subtending 

 usually 1 perfect and 1-2 arrested spikelets. 



Spikelets obliquely ovate to ovate-oblong, subapiculate or obtuse, 1 J to 1^ 

 line long, pallid or purplish at the tips, glabrous. 



Glumes very thin, membranous, ovate, acute or subacute, whitish or purplish, 

 lower one 3-nerved, J as long as the spikelet ; upper 5-nerved, ^ as long as the 

 spikelet, nerves faint. Florets, loiver male. Valve equal or subequal to the 

 spikelet, flat or depressed along the middle, similar to the upper glume ; pale 

 subequal to the valve. Perfect floret equalling or slightly exceeding the male, 

 plano-convex, oblong, usually minutely apiculate, pallid or purplish upwards. 

 Valve coriaceous, transversely wrinkled, 5-neryed. Anthers ^ to 1 line long. 

 Grain depressed ellipsoid, f line long. 



Eabitut : Natal. Impunzane, Sutherland ; Nottingham, Buchanan 70 ; Um- 

 Tpumulo, Buchanan 170 ; without precise locality, Gerrard 473, Buchanan \&^\ 

 Berea, Wood bd2>5 ; near Maritzburg, St. George 5 {Wood 7241); Shirley, Mooi 

 River, W. T. Woods. 



"Not relished by cattle when green, when ripe they like it. Cattle prefer it 

 to ordinary veldt. Makes a good weighty hay." — W. T. Woods. 



Fig 1, Spikelet with involucre ; 2, lower glume ; .3, upper glume ; 4, lower valve ; 5, 

 pale ; 6, stamnns and lodicules ; 7, upper valve ; 8,~ pale ; 9, pistil, stamens and lodicutes. 

 All enlarged. 



