Tufted perennial without rhizomes; culms 30-100 cm high. Leaf-blades flat or rolled, mostly 15-30 cm long and 24 mm wide. Panicle ovate or oblong, 440 cm long, the spikelets loosely contracted about the obliquely ascending primary branches. Spikelets 6-50-flowered, narrowly oblong, 3-20 mm long, 1.5-2.5 mm wide, the opposite rows of florets not overlapping, leaving the rhachilla partly visible, typically grey-green but varying from yellowish to dark green and often tinged with purple, breaking up from the base, the rhachilla persistent; glumes subequal, ovate-elliptic, 0.8-1.7 mm long, acute; lemmas broadly ovate and acute to subacute when flattened, 1.4-2 mm long, minutely asperulous; palea falling soon after the lemma, the keels scaberulous; anthers 3, 0.5-1 mm long. Caryopsis ellip¬soid, 0.7 mm long.

Fl. & Fr. Per. throughout most of the year.

Type: Algeria, Desfontaines (Fl).

Distribution: Pakistan (Punjab & Kashmir); north Africa to Zambia and Angola; Mauritania to the Philippines.

Eragrostis chariis (Schult.) Hitchc., a name often misapplied to Eragrostis atrovirens (e.g. Sultan & Stewart, Grasses W. Pak. 2:234) is a synonym of Eragrostis nutans (Retz.) Steud., a quite different species.

An extremely common grass forming an appreciable part of the fodder available in waste places in the plains.

Eragrostis gangetica (Roxb.) Steud., Syn. Pl. Glum. 1:266. 1854, is similar to Eragrostis atrovirens but is an annual. The florets diverge at 45 degrees from the rhachilla and are 34 times as long as the internode. The lemmas, which are 1.2-1.7 mm long, do not overlap and the rhachilla is visible between them. There are only 2 stamens.

Widespread in India; it is reported from East Punjab and may occur in Pakistan.

Eragrostis nigra Nees ex Steud., Syn. Pl. Glum. 1:267. 1854, is also similar, having a loose open panicle, slate-grey to almost black florets and lemmas 1.5-2.2 mm long.

Reported from Chitral by Stamm & Wohrl but no authentic specimens have been seen.