Dactyloctenium scindicum Boiss.

Nile region, eastern desert, Res Sea coastal strip and Gebel Elba.

Kenya, Somalia, Ethiopia and the Red Sea coast of Sudan to Egypt, Arabia to Afghanistan, Pakistan, northwest India.

Sandy soils.

Perennial.

This is a well defined species readily recognised by its small tufts of often rather glaucous leaves on spreading stolons, by its long anthers, and by the compact inflorescence of short falcate spikes. It is cosidered to be a good fodder grass.

Stoloniferous perennial forming extensive spreading mats; culms slender with swollen bases, 7-45 cm high, erect. Leaf-blades flat or loosely folded, tough and rather glaucous, 1-11 cm long, 1.5-3 mm wide, scattered papillose-hispid especially along the margins. Inflorescence composed of 34(5) slightly falcate oblong spikes 0.8-2 cm long forming a compact head, the spikes readily disarticulating at maturity from the top of the culm. Spikelets 3-9-flowered, broadly lanceolate 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 scabrid keel extended into an awn half to as long as the glume; lemmas lanceolate in profile, 3-3.8 mm long, obtuse to acute with the scabrid keel extended into a mucro up to 0.8 mm long; palea-keels finely scabrid, unwinged; anthers 1.1-2 mm long. Grain 0.7-1 mm long, transversely rugose.

Distribution: Pakistan (Sind, Baluchistan, Punjab & N.W.F.P.); Kenya north to the Sudan and eastward to Northwest India.

Fl. & Fr. Per.: September-May.