Dactyloctenium scindicum - Sind Crowfoot Grass

Sind Crowfoot Grass is a slender perennial grass forming extensive spreading mats; stems slender with swollen bases, 7-45 cm high, erect. It is readily recognized by its small clusters of often rather glaucous leaves on spreading runners, by its long anthers, and by the compact inflorescence of short sickle shaped spikes. Leaf-blades are flat or loosely folded, tough and rather glaucous, 1-11 cm long, 1.5-3 mm wide, scattered papillose-bristly especially along the margins. Inflorescence is composed of 3-4 slightly sickle shaped oblong spikes 0.8-2 cm long forming a compact head, the spikes readily disarticulating at maturity from the top of the stem. Spikelets are 3-9-flowered, broadly lanceshaped to ovate, 4-8 mm long; glumes broadly elliptic in profile, the lower 1.7-2.5 mm long, the keel narrowly winged, the upper 1.5-2.3 mm long, the prominent rough keel extended into an awn half to as long as the glume. Sind Crowfoot Grass is found in Sind, Baluchistan, Punjab & N.W.F.P., Kenya north to Sudan and eastward to NW India. Flowering: September-May.