Synonymes : Brachiaria prostrata (Lam.) Griseb., Echinochloa reptans (L.) Roberty, Panicum brachythyrsum Peter, Panicum procumbens Lam. ex Nees, Panicum prostratum Lam., Panicum prostratum var. pilosum Eggers, Panicum reptans L., Panicum umbrosum Retz., Urochloa reptans (L.) Stapf
Common name : Running grass, para grass
Common name in Hindi : Para ghas
Bangla English Hindi Urdu
Diagnostic characters
Biology
Ecology and distribution
Nuisance
Weed control
Botany
Uses/Remark
References
Brachiaria reptans is a tropical perennial or annual grass, usually much-branched, decumbent to creeping at the top and rooting at the nodes. The fertile culm is erect and geniculated at the nodes reaching 10 to 50cm tall.
The propagation and dispersion is done by animals, being an endozoo and ornithochorous weed.
Originated in Africa, this weed has reached tropics of the New and Old world like in the middle East, Indian and South East Asian subcontinents, China, Philippines, Indonesia Australia and Pacific Islands. It prefers rather moist to rather dry soils of fields (it disappears after flooding), along road-sides, up to 1200 m altitude and upland rice fields.
It is a weed of minor agricultural importance. It is a good fodder grass.
- Chemical
Pre-emergence application of atrazine at 2.2 kg/ha in sorghum; linuron at 2.2 kg/ha in peanuts; nitrofen at 3.5 kg/ha; alachlor at 2.4 kg/ha; butachlor at 1.5 kg /ha, Anilophos at 400 g/ha, Pretilachlor at 1.0 kg/ha.
Habit
Decumbent to creeping at the top, usually much-branched and rooting at the nodes.
Roots
Adventitious roots at the nodes.
Stem
Fertile culms erect and geniculated at the nodes, slender, hollow and glabrous, reaching 10 to 50cm tall.
Leaves
Ovate-lanceolate blade with broadly cordate, more or less amplexicaul base and attenuated, acute apex, serrulate margin, often wavy, glabrous or sparsely hairy, 2 to 7cm long and 0.5 to 2cm wide; leaf sheaths cylindrical, finely hairy at the base of the nodes, densely ciliate along the free margins, 1.5-2cm; ligule very short, fringed, long-ciliate membrane; articulation zone well-developed, pale.
Inflorescence
Dense racemes (pseudo-spikes), composed of 3-15 lateral ascending branches each 2-3cm, and a terminal one; raceme rachis with long white hairs, narrow, with a median keel on the face to which the numerous spikelets are attached; the lower racemes with broadened axis, with the spikelets in alterning pairs; the upper ones more 3-angular and less regular; spikelets 2mm long, elliptic-oblong, flattened, with short mucro at the apex, dropping from the pedicels, pale yellow in color.
Fruit
Caryopsis oblong, flattened, clasped by the hard upper lemma, the styles sub persistent.
- Soerjani M., Kostermans A. J. G. H., Tjitrosoepomo G. 1987. Weeds of rice in Indonesia. Balai Pustaka. Jakarta.
- Häfliger, E. and Scholz, H. 1980. Grass Weeds 2. Documenta Ciba-Geigy. Switzerland.
- Bosser J. 1969. Graminées des paturages et des cultures à Madagascar. Mémoire Orstom No. 35. France.
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