Compilation
Digitaria botryostachya
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Name
Identification
Digitaria botryostachya Stapf [family POACEAE ] Verified by Stapf,O., Digitaria rivae (Chiov.) Stapf [family POACEAE ] (stored under name); Digitaria eriantha Steud. [family POACEAE ]
Related name
- Digitaria eriantha
- Digitaria rivae
- Digitaria botryostachya
Flora
Entry for DIGITARIA botryostachya Stapf [family ]
Herbarium
Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (K)
Collection
Flora of Tropical Africa
Resource Type
Reference Sources
Entry From
Flora of Tropical Africa, Vol 9, page 1, (1917) Author: (By O. STAPF.)
Names
DIGITARIA botryostachya Stapf [family ]
Information
Perennial, with a branched rather stout rhizome emitting more or less discrete flowering and barren shoots from plump extravaginal innovation buds covered with greyish-tomentose short broad cataphylls. Culms slender, erect, up to 1 ft. high, glabrous, with a single subbasal node, uppermost internode long-exserted. Leaves glaucous; sheaths tight, finely striate, glabrous or the lower minutely hairy or scaberulous between the nerves; ligules short, scarious, glabrous; blades linear, long-tapering to a fine point, of the basal leaves 3–5 in. long, of the cauline much shorter, 2–2 1/2 lin. wide, flat, glabrous with some long fine spreading white hairs towards the base, margins cartilaginous, sometimes crisp, scaberulous upwards, lateral nerves numerous, very close and fine. Racemes 6–10, racemosely disposed on a slender upwards angular common rhachis 2–3 in. long, obliquely erect, solitary, 3/4–1 in. long, straight, the lower bare at the base or with arrested barren pedicels, glaucous; rhachis very slender, up to 1/5 lin. wide, triquetrous, angles finely marginate, scaberulous to scabrid; pedicels 2-nate, filiform, angular, scaberulous, unequal, the longer 3/4 lin. long. Spikelets appressed, imbricate, lanceolate-oblong, acute to subacute, 1 1/4 lin. long, more or less silky on the sides, pale. Lower glume delicately hyaline, rounded, 1/5 lin. long, soon disappearing; upper oblong, obtuse, or almost so, 1 lin. long, 5-nerved with a line of hairs on each side of the midrib and along the margins, marginal hairs much longer, up to 1/8 lin. long, very fine, slightly curled, with obtuse tips. Lower floret: valve lanceolate-oblong, acute to subacute, 1 1/4 lin. long, 7-nerved, the inner 2 side-nerves on each side approximate with a line of usually appressed hairs between them, a fringe of often spreading white hairs along the margins, hairs as in the upper glume, the marginal up to over 1/3 lin. long; valvule and lodicules minute. Upper floret lanceolate, shortly acuminate, very acute, 1 1/4 lin. by 2/5 lin., thinly chartaceous, chestnut-brown. Anthers 1/2 lin. long. Stigmas orange.
Distribution
Abyssinia Nile Land Arussi Country; Ardaga, Drake-Brockman, 131!
Notes
This is possibly the plant which Chiovenda described and figured, from an nflorescence, as Panicum Rivæ in Ann. Istit. Bot. Roma, vii. 62, fig. ii. (Digitaria Rivæ, Stapf in Kew Bulletin, 1907, 213; Chiov. in Result. Scient. Miss. Stefanini-Paoli, i. 183, 224, 225). It was collected by Riva (no. 303) in the Ogaden desert, south or south-west of the Arussi country, by Provenzale at Merca, and by Paoli at Balaad on the Web Shebeli, both in Southern Italian Somaliland. The inflorescence figured is 8 in. long and bears 25–30 racemes with solitary or 2–3-nate spikelets the longest of whose pedicels equal the spikelets. Chiovenda also describes the barren valve as 5-nerved, but this may be due to oversight.