Compilation
Digitaria botryostachya

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.