FLORA OF ADEN. 
383 
Aristida tenuis Hochsfc. in Flora, XXVIII (1855) 200. 
Description Stems 6-12 inches high, many ascending from the 
foot, simple or proliferously branched, slender. Leaves 1-3 inches long, 
Very slender, curved, convolute, rigid, smooth. 
Panicles 3-6 inches long ; branches all very short and crowded, or 
with sometimes a few remote lower down or the stem ascending from a 
naked base and bearing a dense oblong fascicle of spikelets, rhachis 
smooth, branches scaberulous. Spikelets very shortly pedicelied, pale 
green or straw-coloured. Lower glume ^ inch, keel scaberulous ; upper 
glume £ inch, tip 2-toothed below the awn ; valve scaberulous, callus 
shortly bearded ; column of awn nearly as long as the glumes, slender, 
smooth, branches capillary. 
Locality : — Aden (Bird wood). 
Distribution : — Senegal, Kordofan, Egypt, Arabia, Punjab, Raj- 
pootana, Jodhpore, Southern India. 
The Aden plant is a variety of the above species : 
Var. meccana Fenzl. in Kotschy PI. Aeth. n. 103. Glumes equal, 
florets 3i lines long ; sets© 6-7 lines long. 
9. Sporobolus R. Br. 
Annuals or perennials of various habit ; ligules reduced to a ciliate 
or ciliolate rim. Panicles contracted to spike-like, or more or less open, 
sometimes extremely lax. Spikelets usually very small, continuous on 
the pedicels ; rhachilla more or less readily disarticulating above the 
glumes, or very rarely produced into a bristle. Floret 1, hermaphrodite. 
Glumes 2, delicately membranous, lower usually smaller, nerveless, 
upper 1-nerved, falling away one after the other. Valve more or less 
resembling the upper glume, 1-nerved or more or less distinctly 3- 
nerved. Palea usually almost as long as the valve, 2-nerved, folded 
between the nerves, often split by the maturing grain. Lodicules 2, 
small, broadly cuneate, glabrous, thin. Stamens 3, rarely 2. Ovary 
glabrous ; styles short, distinct, terminal ; stigmas plumose or subas- 
pergilliform. 
Grain free, falling out or retained and dehiscing ; pericarp thin, 
usually swelling in water, rigid, dehiscing, or the inner layers muci- 
laginous when wetted and adherent, or the whole pericarp adnate and 
indistinct ; hilum small, punctiform, basal ; embryo rather large. 
Species about 70, 
