Urochloa distachya

The species is a creeping annual or short-lived perennial plant. Culms slender, straggling, rooting at lower nodes, 20Ð60 cm tall, nodes pubescent (Flora of China Editorial Committee, 2015). The leaf blades are broadly linear to narrowly lanceolate, loose, glabrous or with tubercle-based hairs or ciliate margins, 2Ð8 cm long, and 3Ð7 mm wide. Leaf base subrounded, margins thicker and scabrous, apexacute or acuminate. Ligule a fimbriated membrane, few long hairs on shoulders. Inflorescences produce 2Ð3 racemes borne on a 0.5Ð2 cm long axis, unilateral, 2-6 cm long. Central inflorescence axis 3-10 cm long. Rachis narrowly winged, glabrous on margins, with very short scabrous hairs. Racemes are 1Ð3 cm long, bearing the spikelets on a narrowly winged rachis. Spikelets are narrowly elliptic, 2.4Ð3 mm long, glabrous, and acute, or 3.3-3.7 mm long, and slightly dorsally compressed. Spikelet packing adaxial, regular, 2 -rowed. Spikelets solitary. Fertile spikelets sessile, comprised of a basal sterile floret and a fertile floret, there is no rhachilla extension, and they fall entire. Rhachilla internodes elongated between glumes. Glumes dissimilar and reaching apex of florets, thinner than fertile lemma. The lower glume is ovate, 1/3Ð1/2 as long as the spikelet, clasping, membranous, without keels, 5-7-veined. Lower glume with obtuse apex, upper glume apex acute, oblong, separated from the lower by a short internode. Upper lemma rugulose, margins involute, bluntly acute. Lemma of lower sterile floret similar to upper glume, oblong, equal length of spikelet, membranous, 5 -veined, acute. Fertile lemma elliptic, 3-3.5 mm long, indurate. Basal sterile florets barren, with palea involute, indurate, surface rugose. Fruit testa glossy, with dense low papillae. Rhizomes absent. Stolons absent or present.