This grass is a very variable plant and has a few varieties. The one described above is Var. _Koenigii_ Stapf., and this is the one that occurs very widely. The other two varieties which occur very rarely are (1) _diarrhena_ Stapf. and (2) _tenuissima_ Stapf. The former is a tall plant with very narrow panicle and spikelets and the latter either tall or short and with a panicle bearing very slender divaricate branches. This grass usually occurs in clayey soils especially on the bunds and in the paddy fields. _Distribution._--Throughout India, Burma and Ceylon. Also in tropical Asia and Africa. =Eragrostis amabilis, _W. & A._= This is an annual tufted grass with slender, glabrous, erect or geniculately ascending stems, 6 to 18 inches, leafy chiefly at the base. The _leaf-sheath_ is glabrous and smooth. The _ligule_ is absent or very obscure. The _leaf-blade_ is lanceolate-linear or linear, narrowed from a broad subcordate base to an acute tip, smooth and flat. The _panicle_ is ovoid-oblong or oblong, open or contracted, sparingly branched; branches are filiform, solitary, ramifying from near the base; rachis and nodes are glabrous. [Illustration: Fig. 218.--Eragrostis amabilis. 1. A portion of a branch with spikelets; 2. a single spikelet; 3 and 4. empty glumes; 5. and 6. a flowering glume and its palea; 7. lodicules, stamens and ovary; 8. grain.] The _spikelets_ are ovate-oblong or linear-oblong, pale or purplish 1/6 to 1/2 inch, up to 50-flowered, rachilla is tough with very short internodes. The glumes are very closely and distichously imbricating (and hence spikelets are pretty); the _empty glumes_ are subequal, ovate-lanceolate, acute or cuspidately acuminate, 1-nerved, 1/25 to 1/16 inch long. _Flowering glumes_ are broadly ovate or suborbicular, mucronulate, punctulate, with the lateral nerves equidistant from the margins and the median nerve, and produced far up towards the median nerve; palea is broad, shorter than its glume, deciduous with it, and with winged and scabrid keels. _Stamens_ are three. Grain is obovoid-ellipsoid, smooth, laterally compressed, reddish-brown. This grass is abundant in wet places on the hills and fairly common in the plains though not abundant. _Distribution._--Throughout India and Ceylon. [Illustration: Fig. 219.--Eragrostis tremula.] =Eragrostis tremula, _Hochst._= This is an elegant annual grass. Stems are tufted erect or sometimes geniculately ascending, branching freely, 6 inches to 3 feet. The _leaf-sheath_ is smooth, glabrous, shorter than the internodes, becoming purplish when dry. The _ligule_ is a ridge of short hairs. The _leaf-blade_ is linear-lanceolate, tapering to a fine point, rigid, glabrous or sparsely hairy, but with prominent white hairs near the mouth of the sheath at the base, 1 to 10 inches long and 1/12 to 3/16 inch broad, the base is rounded and the margin eglandular and very finely serrate.