n._--In black cotton soils in Coimbatore and Bellary
districts.

33. Gracilea, _Koen._

These are small tufted grasses. The inflorescence is a spike bearing
unilaterally turbinate clusters of spikelets which are 2-flowered. The
spikelets have usually four, and rarely six glumes and very often the
rachilla is produced beyond the fourth glume. The first and the second
glumes are narrow (the first being the narrowest), rigid, ciliate with
long hairs and awned. The third glume is bisexual, chartaceous, broadly
ovate, 3-nerved, shortly awned. The fourth glume is similar to the third
but smaller and male. The fifth and sixth glumes when present are small
and empty. Lodicules are two and small. Grain linear oblong.

KEY TO THE SPECIES.

Stems stout; leaves not filiform; tip of
glume III entire 1. G. nutans.

Stems slender, leaves filiform; tip of
glume III toothed 2. G. Royleana.

=Gracilea nutans, _Koen._=

This grass is a perennial with stout fibrous roots. Stems are stout,
leafy and creeping below, ascending later; naked and slender above, 4 to
10 inches long.

The _leaf-sheath_ is glabrous, shorter than the blade, coriaceous and
open above. The _ligule_ is a ridge of hairs.

The _leaf-blade_ is lanceolate, narrowed from the rounded or subcordate
base to the acute tip, coriaceous, 3/4 to 1 inch long; margins are
ciliate with tubercle-based cilia; the surfaces with or without a few
scattered long tubercle-based hairs.

The _inflorescence_ is 1 to 3 inches long, consisting of distant sessile
fascicles of four to six spikelets; the _rachis_ of the spike is
flexuous; the _rachis_ of the fascicles ends in three subulate empty
glumes.

[Illustration: Fig. 187.--Gracilea nutans.

1. A portion of the inflorescence with three fascicles of spikelets; 2.
a spikelet without the first glume; 3, 4, 5 and 8. the first, second,
third and the fourth glume, respectively; 6 and 10. palea of the third
and the fourth glume, respectively; 7. lodicules, stamens and the ovary;
9. the rachilla produced beyond the fourth glume.]

The _spikelets_ are closely appressed and each one has four _glumes_.
The _first_ and the _second glumes_ are empty, 2/5 inch long, rigidly
coriaceous, gradually narrowed from a villous base into an erect,
scabrid awn, 1-nerved. The _second glume_ has broad hyaline margins
towards the base. The _third glume_ is about 1/10 inch, ovate, with a
sh