Swollen fingergrass

Global description
 
Chloris barbata is a grass growing in diffused tufts. The stems are erect and geniculate at the base. The leaves are smooth with a linear lamina and acute at the top. The sheath is smooth with few long stiff hairs at the top. The ligule is very small. The inflorescence is formed OF 5 to 15 erect spikes. They are arranged on top of the stem, as glove fingers. The spikelets are purple violet in color and are protruded by long bristles.
 
General habit
 
Annual herb growing in diffuse tufts, 30 to 75 cm high. It is sometimes stoloniferous.
 
Underground system
 
The roots are fibrous, at the base of the plant, but can develop from the nodes of stolons.
 
Culm
 
The grass culm is elliptical between nodes, hollow, compressed at the base. It is erect or geniculate and ascending, with glabrous node.
 
Leaf
 
The leaves are alternate. The sheath is glabrous or with a few long stiff hairs at the top. The ligule is short, 0.5 mm, membrane ciliated. The lamina is linear, flat or partially folded, with an acute apex. It can measure up to 40 cm long and 3 to 6 mm wide. The faces are smooth to loosely hairy, the margin is finely scabrous.
 
Inflorescence
 
The inflorescence is composed of 5 to 15 digitate erect racemes, they are placed on top of the floral axis, like glove fingers. Racemes measure 3 to 8 cm long, they are purple in color, more or less stocky or flexuous. The rachis have scabrous angles.
 
Flower
 
The spikelets are subsessile, laterally compressed, 2.5 mm long, with 3 flowers and 3 edges. The lower glume is lanceolate, membranous, uninervate with scabrous hull. The upper hull is rounded at the top. They measure 1.7 to 2.5 mm. The internal flower is fertile. The elliptical trinervate lemma, is extended by an edge of 4.5 to 7 mm long, barbed. The two external flowers are sterile, shorter and truncated. Lemmas are widened and surmounted by a long barbed edge of 2.5 to 7 mm.