FIELD AND GARDEN CROPS 



OF THE 



NOETH-WEST PEOYINCES AND OUDH. 



FAJRT II. 



PANICUM MILIACEUM, Unn: 



ITideVUe XXIIL] 



English, none ; Veenactjlae, chehna, chinwa, chirwa, sawan-chaitwa, and sawan-jethwa 

 (Barabanki), kuri (Mainpuri), phikar, rali, bansi (all three in Bundelkhand) ; the varagu of 

 Southern India ; Sanscrit, anu, vrihibheda.t 



Natural order Graininece, tribe Panicece. An annual herbaceous grass with fibrous roots. Stems 

 many, 2-4 ft. high, branching, striate, often rough with long bulbous-based hairs. Leaves large ; 

 sheaths 4-5 in. ; ligule shallow, ending in a fringe of silky hairs ; blade 12-16 ia. long and about | 

 in. across, acuminate, upper surface clothed with long sillcy hairs. Spikelets 2-flowered, arranged 

 in gracefully drooping smooth panicles ; glumes unequal, cuspidate, the lower one small, ovate, with 

 five prominent nerves ; pales of the sterile flowers 2, membranous, the lower one mucronate and re- 

 sembling the outer glume, the inner one smaller, emarginate or bifid ; pales of the hermaphrodite 

 flower about equal, concave, cartilaginous. Lodicules 2, triangular, fleshy, equalling the ovary. 

 Fruit (the grain) enclosed by the pales, small, oval, yellowish brown, polished. 



Decandolle in his recent work on the " Origin of Cultivated Plants " is inclined to 

 consider tliis plant to have been originally a native of Egypt or Arabia. Its introduction 

 into India, however, must have taken place at a very early period, considering the fact of 

 its having received Sanscrit names. 



Chehna is one of six small millets which figure in the agriculture of the Provinces ; 

 and judged by the area of its cultivation, it is of but little economic importance. It is 

 nearly related to sawan, the millet next noticed, and in some districts is considered a 

 kind of sawan, a circumstance which has led to some confusion in nomenclature. Thus, 

 in Barabanki, the name for chehna is saioan-chaitica or sawan-jethwa, which denote res- 

 pectively the sawan sown in April and reaped in May. This indicates the leading charac- 

 teristic of chehna from an agricultural point of view, which is that it is almost exclusively 

 a hot weather crop, whereas the other millets are grown during the monsoon. It 

 requires of course copious irrigation, and the patches of chehna clustering round the 



• References :— Linn. Sp. Pi. 8G ; Koxb. ri. Ind. i. 310 ; Parlatore JFl. Ital. i. 122 ; Baden-Powell Pnnj, Prod, p. 237 ; 

 Gaz. N.-W. P., Vol. X. 688 ; DC. L'Orig. PI. Cult. p. 302. 

 t Piddington Index 66. 



B 



