glume_ is oblong,
sub-acuminate, a little shorter than the second glume, 3-nerved,
sub-chartaceous, paleate; _palea_ is similar to the glume in texture.
_Anthers_ are pale yellow with a tinge of purple. _Stigmas_ are white.
_Lodicules_ are two, minute and cuneate.

This is an excellent fodder grass and is very much liked by cattle. It
grows very rapidly and is found in cultivated fields and in somewhat
rich loamy soils.

_Distribution._--Throughout the Presidency in the plains and low hills.

[Illustration: Fig. 76.--Digitaria longiflora.]

=Digitaria longiflora, _Pers._=

This is a perennial grass with short underground branches covered with
scales. Stems are many, tufted, slender, creeping and rooting, or
ascending and suberect, simple or branched, 6 to 20 inches long and
leafy and leaves bifarious and divaricate.

_Leaf-sheaths_ are hairy or glabrous, compressed, keeled. The _ligule_
is a short membrane. _Nodes_ are glabrous.

_Leaf-blades_ are broadly lanceolate or linear-lanceolate, acute,
spreading, flat, or in short-leaved forms, stiff and pungent, 1 to 2
inches long (rarely also 5 inches long), glabrous above and below,
ciliate at the margins towards the base, and with a very minutely
serrate hyaline margin.

The _inflorescence_ consists of two to four terminal spikes with a
slender, long, hairy or glabrous peduncle. The spikes are slender, erect
or spreading with fine winged glabrous rachis.

The _spikelets_ are small, 1/20 to 1/14 inch, geminate, one short and
the other long pedicelled, appressed to the rachis, elliptic, silky with
slender crisped hairs, pale green or purplish.

[Illustration: Fig. 77.--Digitaria longiflora.

1. A portion of the spike; 2. the first glume; 3 and 4. the second and
third glumes; 5 and 6. the fourth glume and its palea; 7. lodicules,
ovary and stamens.]

There are three _glumes_ with a rudimentary first glume. The _first
glume_ is very minute and hyaline. The _second glume_ is as long as the
third, membranous, 5-nerved (rarely 3- to 7-nerved), silkily hairy. The
_third glume_ is similar to the second and usually 7-nerved (rarely 3-
to 5-nerved). The _fourth glume_ is sub-chartaceous, ovate-oblong,
paleate, slightly shorter than the third glume, pale brown, smooth.
There are two small _lodicules_. Styles are long and purple.

This grass grows in cultivated dry fields. It seems to like a sandy
loamy soil.

_Distribution._--Throughout India.

3. Eriochloa,