Annuals or perennials. Leaf-blades linear; ligule very short, membranous, ciliately fringed. Inflorescence composed of solitary racemes embraced, often tightly, by sheathing spatheoles, and gathered into a rather open false panicle; raceme comprising 2 homogamous pairs of spikelets forming a sort of involucre, 1 sessile spikelet borne upon a short internode (rarely a second spikelet present) and 2 pedicelled spikelets, deciduous below the homogamous spikelets at maturity, these and the sessile spikelet falling as a unit. Homogamous spikelets male or reduced to a sterile scale, often indurated, commonly all pedicelled. Sessile spikelet 2-flowered, lanceolate-elliptic, dorsally flattened; lower glume cartilaginous, bidentate; lower floret reduced to a hydine lemma; upper floret bisexual, the lemma stipitiform, entire or bidentate, bearing a glabrous awn; palea small or absent: caryopsis oblong-elliptic, slightly dorsally compressed. Pedicelled spikelet male or barren, lanceolate, awnless, deciduous or not, without a callus, borne upon a filiform pedicel.

A genus of about 20 species in Southeast Asia and Australia; 1 or 2 species occur in Pakistan.

Iseilema laxum Hack. has been reported from the Punjab and Stewart (Ann. Cat. Vasc. Pl. W. Pak. 111) cites Sultan Ahmad (Lahore, water courses) and Duthie (Rawalpindi). The Duthie citation can be traced to Fodder Grasses p. 43 where he mentions the vernacular name applied to this species in Rawalpindi, but he does not say that the plant grows in the district. Only 2 sheets of 1seilerna from Pakistan have been seen, one was collected by Thomson (K) but the other (in RAW) bears no collector’s name; both are from Lahore and both are Iseilema prostratum. Because of its similarity to Iseilema prostratum, it is probable that Iseilema laxum has been reported from Pakistan in error. In Iseilema laxum the spatheoles are smooth (not tuberculate), the sessile spikelet 4-5 mm (not 2.5-3 mm) long, and the nodes glabrous.

Lower Taxon

• Iseilema prostratum (Linn.) Anderss.