PENICILLARIA SPICATA, WUld. 



[ Vide Plate VII.] 



English, bulrush millet; Vbknacular, bajra, bajri, lahra, bajra tangunanwa (in Azamgarh 

 where the great millet is called bdjj'a jhupanwa). The chambu of the Madras Presidency. 



Natural order Gramhiew, tribe Panicece. A tall erect grass. Stems many, 3-6 ft. high, rooting 

 from some of the lowest joints. Leaves long lanceolate, midrib stout and prominent beneath ; ligule 

 very short, truncate ciliate. Spikelets arranged in cylindrical spike-lilve panicles 6-9 in, long and 

 |-1 in. in diameter, each spikelet surrounded by an involucre of yellowish brown bristles, the 

 inner bristles themselves j^lumose hairy, glumes unequal enclosing 2 flowers, the lower male and 

 the upper hermaphrodite ; outer glume minute truncate, inner nearly equalling the pales, retuse* 

 Pales about equal, lower one overlapping the upper, broad, smooth, 5-veined, mucronate, ciliate at 

 the edge. Stamens 3. Style single with a bifid feathering stigma. Seed small, pearl-coloured, 

 smooth. 



There are two distinct varieties, known respectively as 5djra and bdjri, the former 

 with greenish coloured, and the latter with reddish coloured and rather smaller, grain. 



Bajra is grown very extensively, occupying 19^ lakhs of acres in the 30 temporari- 

 ly settled N.-W. Provinces Districts, or 8 per cent, of their total cropped area, but it is 

 in great measure confined to the western Districts, and east of Allahabad it is compara- 

 tively rare. 



It is a kharif crop, being sown a little later and reaped a little earlier than juar, and 

 it is occasionally sown on land which was intended for juar, if sowing time be delayed 

 by floods or failure of rain. Its grain is supposed to be heating, and hence is largely 

 consumed by the poorer classes in the cold weather, though it not unfrequently induces 

 diarrhoea. The dry stalks are used as cattle fodder, being, however, vastly inferior to 

 those of juar. 



It is rarely grown alone, and is generally mixed with minor crops of much the same 

 kinds as those grown with juar, the place of munff in the combination being generally, 

 however, taken by mof/i {P/iaseolus aconitifolius). 



If juar be taken as the kharif counterpart of wheat, bajra may be still more aptly 

 compared with barley. Like barley it often occupies very good as well as very bad 

 land, but, as a general rule, it is the crop of poor light-soiled outlying land, and requires 

 perhaps rather less rainfall than juar can make shift with. It is never manured, and but 

 rarely irrigated. 



The land is ploughed from once to four times, and the seed, mixed with that of the 

 subordinate crops, is sown broad-cast and ploughed in at the rate of 1\ to 3 seers per 

 acre. 



* References :— Powell Punj. Prod, 238 ; Drury Useful PI. of India 338. rennisettm typhoideum. Rich. Panicum 

 spicatum, Roxb. 



