These are annual or perennial grasses, with erect or prostrate stems. Inflorescence is a spiciform raceme, bearing the spikelets in clusters of 2 to 4. The spikelets are 1-flowered and usually with two glumes. Sometimes a very minute hyaline lower glume is present. The first glume is thickly coriaceous, 5-ribbed, oblong-lanceolate, and ribs with long recurved spines. The second glume is oblong or oblong-lanceolate, apiculate, chartaceous, 3-nerved and with a perfect flower; palea is as long as the glume, 2-nerved. Lodicules are broad, cuneate and fleshy. There are three stamens. Styles are slender and distinct, with narrow stigmas exserted from the top of the glume. Grain is oblong to ellipsoidal free within the glume and its palea. [Illustration: Fig. 122.--Tragus racemosus.] =Tragus Racemosus, _Scop._= This plant is a perennial with tufted prostrate or erect stems, rooting at the nodes freely and densely leafy. The flowering branches are erect or geniculately ascending and varies from a few inches to about a foot. The _leaf-sheath_ is short, pale, glabrous, somewhat compressed, striate, equitant below and upper are longer, terete and green. The _ligule_ is only a ridge of short, fine hairs. _Nodes_ are glabrous. The _leaf-blade_ is convolute when young, ovate or ovate-lanceolate, variable from 1/4 to 2 inches long and 1/10 to 1/6 inch wide, acuminate, flat or somewhat wavy, glabrous on both the surfaces, rigidly pungent, densely crowded and distichously imbricate in the lower part of the stem, base is amplexicaul, and the margin is distantly serrate and rigidly ciliate. The _inflorescence_ is a spike-like terminal panicle varying in length from 3/4 to 2 inches; the _rachis_ is wavy, slender, angular or grooved, pubescent, the peduncle is striate, pubescent and enclosed by the leaf-sheath. The _spikelets_ are arranged in groups of two, facing each other and appearing like a single spikelet with two equal echinate glumes, sessile, or obscurely pedicelled on very short, tumid, pubescent branches. [Illustration: Fig. 123.--Tragus racemosus. 1. A pair of spikelets; 2, 3 and 4. the first, second and the third glume, respectively; 5. palea of the third glume; 6. ovary, anthers and lodicules.]