FLORA OF ADEN, 
363 
ovate-lanceolate, subacute, ciliate, hyaline, nerveless j upper floral glume 
very slender ciliate ; pale minute, ciliate. 
Distribution .’ — Throughout the warm regions of the Old World* 
ascending to 6,000 feet in India. 
f/m.—The glass being large and coarse, is used mainly as a 
thatching material. The leaves, sheaths, etc., are twisted into rope and 
worked up into mats. As a fodder plant it is especially valued for 
feeding buffaloes. 
Zea Mays Linn. Sp. PI. (1753) p. 971. 
The well known Maize or Indian Corn. 
Cultivated at Shaikh Othman (Yerbury ex litt.) . 
“ This grain in Arabia is called 1 Hind * ; it is grown in Yemen, and 
is imported by land and sea, also from Mokha. It is used for bread 
after being made into flour, but it is more frequently eaten simply 
roasted. Ears of Indian corn, ready roasted, can be purchased at the 
street corners for two pice, or half of an anna, per head. The price per 
100 is from 8 to 12 annas. ” (Hunter, 1. c. p. 66.) 
2 . Pennisetum Pers. 
Perennial or annual ; culms simple or often profusely branched ; 
blades flat or convolute ; ligules usually reduced to a ciliate rim or 
fringe of hairs, rarely membranous. 
Panicle spike-like, usually dense, branches very numerous all 
around the axis, very short, simple with a solitary spikelet, or scantily 
divided with the spikelets in clusters of 2-5 ; the solitary spikelets or 
the clusters subtended by and deciduous with an involucre (very rarely 
a solitary bristle) of often very numerous and usually unequal scabrid 
or plumose simple rarely branched bristles. Lower floret male or barren, 
with or without a pale ; upper floret hermaphrodite. Glumes usually 
small and hyaline, lower sometimes suppressed, upper rarely i the 
length of the spikelet or more and then several-to 7-nerved. Valves 
equal or subequal, membranous to chartaceous, 5 -7-nerved, or the 
lower more or less reduced, thinner, fewer-nerved. Pales subequal to 
the valve and of similar texture, 2 -nerved, or more or less reduced in 
the lower floret. Lodicules small, usually in front and outside the plate 
or 0. Stamens 3. Styles distinct, slender or connate. 
Grain enclosed by the slightly changed valve and pale, broadly 
oblong, slightly dorsally compressed to subglobose ; hilum basal, 
punctiform ; embryo large, J-J the length of the grain. 
Species about 40. 
Distribution i — In most warm countries, particularly in dry regions. 
