PLATE 479. 
Setaria aurea, a. Braun. (Fl. Cap , Vol VIL, p. 426). 
Nat. Order Graminete. 
Perennial or annual or at least flowering the first year. Rhizome short, 
oblique, covered with the remains of old scales and sheaths, sometimes with 
subglobose innovation buds. 
Culms suberect or ascendino^, 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 foot by 1^ to 4 lines, or rarely G 
lines, flat, rather firm, sometimes rather rigid and more or less involute, glabrous 
or scantily hairy towards tlie base, scaberulous or almost smooth. 
Panicle erect, straight or subflexuous, cylindric, 2 inches to more than I foot 
long, 2|- to 3 lines thick (exclusive of the bristles), very dense, very bristly, usually 
orange-coloured or reddish ; axis slender, niinutely 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^ to 1^ 
line long, pallid or purplish at the tips, glabrous. 
Glumes very thin, membranous, ovate, acute or subacute, whitish or purplish, 
loiver one 3-nerved, ^ as long as the spikelet ; vjjper 5-nerved, |- as long as the 
spikelet, nerves taint. Florets, lower male. Valve equal or subequal to the 
spikelet, flat or depressed along the middle, similar to the upper ghmie ; 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-nerved. Anthers |^ to 1 line long. 
Grain depressed ellipsoid, \ line long. 
HcibitSLt : Natal. Impunzane, Sutherland ; Nottingham, Buchanan 70 ; Um- 
■^wmnXo, Bnclianan 170 : without precise locality, Gerrard 473, Biu-hanan \&9 \ 
Berea, IT'^oori 5935 ; near Maritzburg, >SY. George 5 {Wood 7241); Shirley, Mooi 
River, Tl'. T. Woods. 
" Not relished by cattle when green, w^ien 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 g-lume ; .3, upper glume; 4, lower valve ; 5, 
pale ; 6, stamens and lodicules ; 7, upper valve ; 8, pale ; i), pistil, stamens and lodicules. 
All enlarged. 
