_Spikelets_ are linear to ovate-oblong, compressed, pale or green, sometimes purple tinged at the base, few to 40-flowered and occasionally up to 70-flowers, 1/8 to 1 inch. The _empty glumes_ are subequal or the first is a little shorter, ovate, acute, membranous, keeled, and sometimes the keels with glands; the _first glume_ is usually one-nerved (rarely obscurely one- to three-nerved) and the _second glume_ is three-nerved. The _flowering glumes_ are broadly ovate, oblique, obtuse, sometimes with a minute mucro, sub-chartaceous, punctulate, strongly three-nerved, paleate, about 1/12 inch long; palea is shorter than the glume, curved, obovate-oblong, keels ciliolate and persistent. _Stamens_ are three with very small pale yellow anthers. Stigmas are two and white. _Lodicules_ are very small. Grain is globose reddish brown, minutely and obscurely lineolate. This grass is a very common weed occurring in cultivated dry fields all over this Presidency. _Distribution._--Throughout India and Ceylon in the plains and low hills. Occurs also in tropical and sub-tropical parts of Asia and Africa. [Illustration: Fig. 223.--Eragrostis Willdenoviana.] =Eragrostis Willdenoviana, _Nees._= This is a tufted annual. Stems are leafy at the base, erect or geniculately ascending, slender but rigid, varying in length from 4 to 18 inches. The _leaf-sheath_ is smooth, cylindric, glabrous, outer margin ciliate; tufts of long hairs are present at the sides of the margin of the sheath, just outside close to the hyaline patch. The _ligule_ is a fringe of short white hairs. The _nodes_ are greenish or with a tinge of purple, glabrous and with a glandular ring below. The _leaf-blade_ is lanceolate-linear, pointed, flat, rigid, the margin is very minutely serrulate, glandular and occasionally also with fine long hairs; the upper surface is somewhat rough, the lower smooth and both with fine long scattered hairs or glabrous. [Illustration: Fig. 224.--Eragrostis Willdenoviana. 1. Spikelets; 1_a._ 1st glume; 2 and 2_a._ the second glume; 3 and 3a. the flowering glume; 4. palea of the flowering glume; 5. lodicules, stamens and the ovary; 6. grain.] The _inflorescence_ is a stiff open panicle, ovate to oblong, 2 to 4-1/2 inches long on a slender, terete, glabrous peduncle; the main _rachis_ is angular, slender with glandular scars, a little below the attachment of the branches; the branches are capillary, grooved stiff and spreading with small glandular scars just above the node. The _spikelets_ are elliptic-oblong to linear, 1/8 to 3/4 inch by about 1/20 inch, greenish or tinged with purple, few to about 25 (or sometimes even up to 42) glumed, pedicellate; pedicel is capillary, grooved and angular, with a glandular ring about the middle, spreading sometimes at right angles, rachilla is persistent.