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Deflexed Signalgrass
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Deflexed Signalgrass
A Native Photo: Ankush Dave
Common name: Deflexed Signalgrass, Deflexed Brachiaria
Botanical name: Urochloa deflexa    Family: Poaceae (Grass family)
Synonyms: Brachiaria deflexa, Brachiaria regularis, Panicum deflexum, Panicum regulare

Deflexed Signalgrass is a loosely clustered annual grass, with stems 15-70 cm high, often weak and rising up. Leaf-blades are broadly linear, 4-25 cm long, 4-22 mm wide. Inflorescence of 7-15 racemes is borne on an axis 6-15 cm long. Racemes are 2-9 cm long, often compound, bearing mostly paired distant spikelets spreading from the triquetrous rhachis, the inflorescence imitating a panicle; flower-stalks, or some of them, longer than the spikelets, up to 1.5 cm long. Spikelets are broadly elliptic, 2.5-3.5 mm long, hairless to velvet-hairy, pointed, with a short stipe up to 0.5 mm long; lower glume a third to half the length of the spikelet; upper glume and lower lemma membranous; upper lemma rugose, pointed. Deflexed Signalgrass is found in Pakistan (Baluchistan, Punjab & Kashmir), Senegal to Yemen and southwards to South Africa, and a few parts in India. Flowering: July-October.

Identification credit: Manoj Chandran Photographed at Taj Nature Walk, Agra, Uttar Pradesh.

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