Digitaria.'] clvii. gramine^ (Stapf). 449 
and more loosely disposed spikelets with longer hairs than those of the Congo ; 
but one of Mundy's matches exactly with the latter. Welwitsch, 2676, is distin- 
guished by more glabrous blades and glabrescent basal sheaths. D. sulcigiuma, 
Chiov. in Ann. di Bot. Roma, xiii. 4l, is apparently this species (Katanga ; 
Kayogo, Bovone , 86). 
18. D. gayana, Stapf ex Cheval. Sudania, 163. Annual, 1-4 ft. 
high. Culms fascicled, erect or geniculately ascending, 4-5-noded, 
simple or sparingly branched below, slender, glabrous. Leaf- 
sheaths rather tight or at length loosened, the lower longer than the 
internodes, very closely striate, shortly hirsute, pale ; ligules very 
short, truncate, ciliolate ; blades linear from an equally wide base 
tapering very gradually from below the middle to an acute somewhat 
rigid point, 2-6 in. by 2-4 lin., or the lowest often much shorter, 
flat, rather rigid, rough below and along the finely cartilaginous 
and often crisped margins, more or less shortly hirsute to substrigose 
with minutely tubercle-based hairs, midrib very fine and incon- 
spicuous, lateral nerves very numerous and close. Racemes 2-6 
(rarely solitary), sessile, digitate or subdigitate with an angular 
rough common axis (up to 2 in. long), erect or suberect, fastigiate, 
slender, straight or almost so, 2-6 in. long, moderately loose, silvery 
silky ; rhachis slender, straight or slightly wavy, triquetrous, 
lin. wide, finely puberulous, angles narrowly winged (or the green 
lateral wings as wide as the dorsal midrib), scabrid, internodes 
l-J-2 lin. long ; pedicels 2-nate, or the lower 3-4-nate, or the lowest 
in more copious fascicles (stunted branchlets), very unequal, filiform, 
flexuous, terete, with subdiscoid tips, finely scaberuious, the longest 
about lj lin. long (those of the basal fascicles much longer). Spike- 
lets ovate-oblong to ovate-lanceolate, acutbly and finely acuminate, 
1J-1J lin- long excluding the apical tuft of hairs. Lower glume a 
very delicate hyaline rotundate or truncate crenulate loose scale, 
up to l lin. long, usually breaking up early ; upper oblong-lanceolate, 
acute, slightly shorter than the spikelet, membranous, 3-nerved, 
densely hairy all over, hairs appressed, straight or almost so, acute, 
about | lin. long. Lower floret : valve corresponding in outline and 
size to the spikelet, thinly membranous, longitudinally more or less 
depressed, 7-nerved, lateral nerves approximate in the broad bulging 
lateral flexures and distant from the slender sharply prominent 
scaberuious middle nerve, margins densely hairy, forming with the 
scattered and stouter hairs which spring from the spaces between 
the lateral nerves and on the inner side of the innermost side-nerve 
a silky often wavy marginal fringe which is produced beyond the 
acumen of the valve into a long brush-like point, hairs with firm 
walls and acute tips ; valvule and lodicules very minute. Upper 
floret ovate-oblong, finely and acutely acuminate, shortly con- 
tracted at the base, slightly shorter than the lower floret, § lin. 
wide, thinly ehartaceous, very finely granular-punctate, faintly 
3-nerved, pale brown, margins of valve somewhat distant. Anthers 
J lin. long. — Panicum gayanum, Kunth, Rev. Gram. i. 239, t. 31 ; 
EL. TROP. AFR, VOL IX. — PT. 3 2 G 
