PLATE 421. 
Eragrostis superba, Peyr. (Fl. C*ap., Vol. VII., p. o22). 
Nat. Order Graininea?. 
Perennial, densely caispitose with iutravaginal innovations, glabrous. 
Culms erect or geniculately ascending, 2 to 3 feet long, rather stont, smooth, 
2-noded, interne ides exserted, uppermost very long; sheaths smooth, hoarded at 
the moutli, lowest crowded, broad at tlie base, keeled, persistent, upper terete, 
tight ; ligule a fringe of short hairs ; blades linear, long tapering to an acute point, 
2 to 8 inches or more by 1 to lines, firm, more or less rigid, upper often spreading, 
usually more or less involute or convolute, rarely quite flat, smootli below, 
scaberulous on the upper side. 
Panicle narrow, linear or oblong, often interrupted below, erect, 4 to 10 
inches long ; axis usually straight, smooth, terete below, angular above, branches 
distant, erect or suberect, solitary, filiform, usually simply racemose, |- to 3 inches 
long, 1 to 10 spiculate, rarely branched ; jiedice's very unequal, lateral, J to 3 
lines long. 
Spikelets articulated with tlie pedicels, deciduous, rather distant or clustered 
towards the tips of the branches or branchlets, strongly compressed from the side, 
suborbicular, ovate to ovate-oblong, 3 to 8 lines by 2|- to 4|- lines, straw-coloured 
rarely more or less purplish, 7 to 3 7 -flowered. 
Glumes subequal, ovate-lanceolate to lanceolate in profile, acute or mucronate 
1|- to 2^^ lines long, 1-nerved, firmly membranous, strongly keeled. Valves 
obliquely oblong, subacute, if to 2f lines long, acutely keeled, subchartaceous, 
side-nerves prominent and often green. Pales 2-fid, keels winged, wings narrowed 
upwards, produced into obtuse auricles at base, ciliolate. Anthers 1 line long ; 
grain oblong, 1 line long ; pericarp loose ; seed truncate at both ends, sub- 
quadrangular, brown. 
Habitat : Natal. Weenen County, 5000 feet alt.. Wood 4416 ; at 3500 feet 
alt., Wood 3587 ; banks of the Tugela Kiver, Buchanan 255 ; and without precise 
locality, Gerrard 468 ; Zululand, Wood 7307. 
Also from Delagoa Bay, Forhes, and in tropical Africa. 
Drawn from Wood s 3587. 
The native name of this grass is Madolwaiia. 
Fig 1, LowL'i- ghiiiie ; 2, upjier glimie ; 3, valve ; 4, pale : .3, }iistil, stameus and loilicules. 
All ('nUir<icil. 
