Saccharum fallax Balansa

This is a very handsome grass with a striking golden or rusty brown, softly hairy inflorescence. The racemes often contain a mixture of awned and awnless spikelets in varying proportions. Even adjacent spikelets may differ in this character, which is not related to whether the spikelet is sessile or pedicelled.

Perennial. Culms 1.5–3 m tall, 8–12 mm in diam., nodes bearded with golden-brown hairs, hirsute below panicle. Leaf sheaths usually longer than internodes, margin brown-hirsute; leaf blades stiff, 40–80 × 1–1.5 cm, uppermost usually very small, glabrous or tuberculate-pilose, margins scabrid, base narrowed, apex acuminate; ligule ca. 1.5 mm. Panicle loosely oblong in outline, 30–60 cm, golden or ferruginous brown, axis pilose, bearded at nodes, primary branches sparsely branched in lower part; racemes flexuously ascending, densely spiculate, 8–16 cm; rachis internodes 2–2.4 mm, ciliate. Spikelets 3–4 mm, brown; callus hairs a little shorter than spikelet, brown; lower glume oblong-lanceolate, papery becoming herbaceous toward apex, back brown-hirsute, apex narrowly truncate; lower lemma 3/4 length of glumes; upper lemma oblong, obtuse and awnless or minutely mucronate, varying to shortly 2-toothed and awned from sinus; awn twisted, bent, up to 6 mm. Anthers 3, 1.6–2.2 mm. Fl. and fr. Aug–Oct.

Guangdong, Guangxi, Guizhou, Hainan, Yunnan [NE India, Indonesia, Laos, Myanmar, Vietnam].

Hill slopes; 400–1000 m.

Erianthus chrysothrix Hackel; E. fallax (Balansa) Ohwi; Narenga fallax (Balansa) Bor; N. fallax var. aristata (Balansa) L. Liu; Saccharum fallax var. aristatum Balansa; Sclerostachya fallax (Balansa) Grassl.