sh purple anthers;
_stigmas_ are white at first, but turning brown while withering.
_Lodicules_ are two, minute. The grain is oblong, pale, brown and obtuse
at both ends, embryo about 1/3 of the grain.

This grass flourishes in all kinds of soils all over the Presidency.

_Distribution._--Throughout the plains of India and Ceylon. Also in
Afghanistan and South Africa.

[Illustration: Fig. 183.--Sporobolus commutatus.]

=Sporobolus commutatus, _Kunth._=

This is an annual and usually grows in loose tufts. Stems are slender,
always erect or ascending, leafy and branching, 2 to 15 inches long.

The _leaf-sheath_ is shorter than the internode, slightly compressed,
finely striate, glabrous and occasionally with a few scattered
tubercle-based hairs, margin ciliate; the uppermost sheath is cylindric
somewhat long and embraces the greater portion of the peduncle and has a
bunch of short hairs at the top.

The _leaf-blade_ is narrow linear-lanceolate, acuminate scaberulous
throughout, with long tubercle-based hairs scattered all over, but more
of them near the base; margins spinulosely distantly serrulate or
scabrid, base rounded or subcordate, 1/2 to 4-1/2 inches long and 1/16
to 3/16 inch wide.

[Illustration: Fig. 184.--Sporobolus commutatus.

1. A portion of a branch; 2. spikelet; 3, 4 and 5. first, second and the
third glume; 6. palea of the third glume; 7. ovary and anthers; 8 and 9.
grain.]

The _inflorescence_ is diffuse, pyramidal, 1 to 3 inches by 3/4 to 2
inches, on a slender glabrous peduncle 1 to 6 inches long, main rachis
is slender and angled, with a glandular streak or without it. Branches
are effuse, fine, capillary (more so than in S. coromandelianus),
obliquely ascending, never stiff and horizontal, verticillate or
irregularly subverticillate, the lowest whorl of five to twelve and the
others three to seven branches; the rachis of the branches is obscurely
scaberulous, slightly swollen at the point of insertion; branchlets are
never appressed to the branch, always drooping and spreading on all
sides, and bearing two to four spikelets.

The _spikelets_ are about 1/16 inch long, ovate-lanceolate, acute or
acuminate dark or pale green, sometimes purplish, solitary or two to
four on long slender pedicels, drooping, never appressed, and with
glandular streaks. There are three _glumes_. The _first glume_ is
minute, hyaline, ovate, obtuse or acute, nerveless. The _second glume_
is five or six times as