Marsh Panic Grass

A vigorous creeping water-grass eaten by buffalo.

Aquatic perennials; culm decumbent and rooting at base, upper parts floating on water, soft, often 1 cm in diam., flowering culm as much as 1 m tall. Blade 10-30 cm long, 8-16 mm wide; sheath glabrous, longer than internode; ligule a ring of hairs, ca. 2 mm long. Panicle open, partially included in upper most sheath, 15-30 cm long, spikelets oblong-lanceolate, ca. 4 mm long, acuminate; lower glume hyaline, acute to truncate, ca. 1 mm long, veins obscure; upper glume and lower lemma equal or subequal, 7-9-veined; lower lemma enclosing a hyaline lower palea of ca. 2/3 length of lower lemma; upper lemma ca. 2.5 mm long, smooth and shiny, indurate, pale at maturity.

Aquatic perennial; culms 25-130 cm high, spongy, erect or ascending from the creeping lower portion, this usually rooting at the nodes. Leaf-blades linear to narrowly lanceolate, (8-)15-30(-50) cm long, 6-14 mm wide, subcordate at the base, flat, glabrous, blunt or sharply acute; sheaths glabrous and ± loose. Panicle ovate or oblong, 10-30 cm long, the branches naked below, the lowermost whorled. Spikelets narrowly lanceolate, 3.24 mm long, glabrous, acute or shortly acuminate, appressed to the branches; lower glume orbicular, hyaline, up to a quarter the length of the spikelet, obtuse or truncate, nerveless; upper glume 7-nerved; lower lemma 9-nerved, its palea well developed or absent; upper lemma pallid, smooth and shining.

Tropics of Asia, southeastwards to Australia.

Tropical Asia and Australia. Taiwan, in shallow water on margins of ponds.

Distribution: Pakistan (Punjab); Nepal, India and Ceylon, through Burma to Southeast Asia and tropical Australia.

700-1100 m

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