The grain shows a slight flattening, which marks the position of the embryo.
The base of the grain is slightly flattened with a small depression called as hilum.
The naked grain is more or less spherical in shape and the colour can be brown, reddish brown, black, orange red, purple and white.
The grain is globose and smooth one with the pericarp thin, hyaline and loose.
An earhead takes seven to eight days to complete its flowering
In each spikelet, the opening of the florets is from bottom to top and one floret in the spikelet opens per day.
The average number of spikelets in a finger had been found to be 67 to 73
The four types of ear heads, not withstanding their varying finger lengths, do not present very marked differences in the number of spikelets on a finger.
Stamens three, ovary superior with two dsitinct free styles ending in plumose stigmas.
There are two lodicules broad and trunky.
Palea slightly shorter than lemma, two keeled with the keel wings.
Flowering lemmas are broadly ovale, acute, three nerved and 2-5 mm long.
Enclose bisexual flowers, but terminal ones sometimes sterile or male, arranged in two opposite rows and two lodicules each.
The lower 2 glumes are 1-4 mm long with 5-7 veined keels and it is barren.
The upper glume is similar, but slightly longer.
The lower glume is ovate, obtuse and keeled with lateral nerve close to the keel.
Each spikelet is 3 to 7 flowered enclosed by the lemma and palea.
Spikelets about 70 arranged alternately on rachis, each containing 4 to 7 seeds.
They are sessile and arranged in 2 rows alternately attached to one side of the rachis.
They are often curved, crowded, 2 to 4 flowered.
The spikelets are carried on small rachillae at the ends of the branches of the panicle.
The fisty has the in-curved spikelets in a greater intensity of curving giving a roundish, fist-like appearance.
In the open, the fingers are the longest and gape out and present a characteristic funnel-shaped appearance.
In the top-curved, the curved fingers are longer with the result that they retain the central hollow.
In the in-curved, the fingers are short and curve in and practically close up the central hollowgiving the earhead an obovate shape.
There are four types of panicle shapes, namely, (i) the top-curved, (ii) the in-curved, (iii) the open and (iv) the fisty.
The branches are slender to robust, linear to oblong, up to 24 cm long, each branch with 60-80 spikelets.
It resembles fingers on hand, hence its common name is finger millet and with an odd one a little lower down the whorl and called the thumb. The panicle consists of a variable number of spikes ranging from 3 to 20 arranged in a bird’s foot style. It is branched with one or a few branches below the main cluster of 4-19 branches.
Inflorescence or Panicle is borne at the end of the vegetative shoot.
Two to four nodes get conjested together in the culms
At the base of the stem, the nodes are often crowded are referred as ‘conjested nodes’.
The internodes of the culm are not of equal length.
Many of the well grown leaves have a tendency to snap and bend down about their upper middle and called as bent leaves.
Leaf blade is linear and taper to an acute point, folded and striated and often with ciliated margins.
The leaf blade has a prominent midrib, ligule, a fringe of hairs.
The leaf sheath is flattened, over lapping, split along the entire length
The leaf sheath envelops the stem lore or less completely and very little of internodes are exposed.
The leaves are distichous, simple and entire
The leaves are arranged alternately on either side of the compressed elliptical culm and it is green in colour.
The plant has a packing of a large number of leaves on short slender culms.
The lower internodes are short and the longest being the terminal node carrying the inflorescence.
The stem is hollow at the internodes and solid at the nodes.
The plant is robust, free tillering, tufted annual grass up to 170 cm tall.
The stem is compressed, elliptic and it is green in colour.
It is slender, erect, compressed, glaborous and smooth, sometimes branching.
When seedlings are pulled out, most of the roots get torn off but very soon fresh roots develop.
As the seedlings begin to grow, fibrous roots arise from the basal nodes.
Lateral roots are formed from the seminal root.
As the ragi grain germinates, the radical pierces its way out and forms the seminal root.
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