网脉莠竹 wang mai you zhu

Annual. Culms very slender, weak, decumbent, up to 50 cm tall. Leaf sheaths glabrous, without cleistogamous spikelets; leaf blades lanceolate to narrowly ovate, thin, 5–6 × 0.8–1.2 cm, pilose with tubercle-based hairs, base narrow, apex acute; ligule ca. 0.8 mm. Racemes 1–3(–4), 3–5 cm; rachis internodes linear-clavate, ciliolate or glabrous. Sessile spikelet 5–6 mm, pallid with green veins; lower glume cartilaginous, back grooved, smooth or minutely scaberulous, flanks keeled above middle, veins reticulately connected by veinlets below apex and along most of length of glume flanks; upper glume smooth, acuminate; lower floret reduced to a small lanceolate scale; upper lemma lanceolate, ca. 1.5 mm, acute, awnless; upper palea ovate, 0.5–0.8 mm. Anthers 3, ca. 0.5 mm. Fl. and fr. Sep–Oct.

Roadsides, ditches, grasslands; 1500–2500 m. Yunnan [NE India].

This taxon represents an extreme local variant from the Micro-stegium vimineum complex. It is distinguished from typical M. vimine-um by the combination of a more delicate habit, broader leaf blades, and a conspicuously reticulately veined lower glume.