Pennisetum orientale Rich

Taxonomy: Plantae > Tracheophyta > Liliopsida > Poales > Poaceae > Pennisetum > P. orientale

Description: Shortly rhizornatous perennial often forming large clumps; culms 20-200 cm high or more, erect or ascending, woody and often densely fastigiately branched below. Leaf-blades up to 60 cm long and 15 mm wide, flat or convolute, glabrous, scaberulous or pubescent. Panicle linear, 8-30 cm long, often interrupted; rhachis with shallow angular ribs below the stumpless scars, scaberulous to pubescent; involucre borne upon a slender pubescent stipe 0.5-1.5 mm long, enclosing 1-3 (-5) spikelets, one of them sessile, the others shortly pedicelled; bristles, at least the inner, loosely plumose, the longest 15-30 mm long. Spikelets lanceolate, 4.5-6.5 mm long; lower glume a quarter the length of the spikelet and obtuse, to one-third or two-fifths as long and acute, rarely as much as half as long and acuminate, 1-nerved, occasionally nerveless; upper glume half to three-quarters the length of the spikelet, acute to acuminate; lower lemma as long as the spikelet, male, setaceously acuminate; upper lemma similar to the lower; anthers apiculate, without a tuft of hair at the tip.

Flowering and Fruiting : March-October

Uses : Used as an Ornamental grass

Cultivation : Cultivated as fodder grass, often found running wild

References

http://www.plantsoftheworldonline.org

https://indiabiodiversity.org