MR. G. BENTHAM ON GRAMINE. 33 
The tribes composing the series of Panicaces run much into 
each other, and have been very variously extended or reduced. 
We have adopted the following six, as having appeared to us to 
be rather better defined than the smaller or larger ones that have 
been proposed. 
Tribe I. PanıcEz. 
The principal character of the Panicew, considered as a tribe 
of Panicaceæ, consists in the hardening of the fruiting glume. 
In several of the smaller genera, however, and even in some 
species of Panicum itself, it is membranous, but usually larger 
than the outer ones, and forming the chief covering of the fruit, 
never hyaline or much reduced as in Andropogone&. Oryzopsis, 
AMilium, and their allies, which were formerly included in "Panicez, 
have been transferred to Agrostidez on account of the persistent 
lower glumes below the articulation. Among the other general 
characters of the tribe, the inartieulate rhachis of inflorescence is 
constant except in Stenotaphrum, where, however, the articulation 
is very tardy and not constant, so that it has often been denied. 
The flowering glume never bears the twisted awn, so general in 
Andropogonew and Tristegine&, although in Eriochloa and a very 
few species of Panicum its obtuse apex has a short, erect, almost 
dorsal point; the awns of Oplismenus, Chetaria, the section 
Echinochloa of Panicum, &c. are straight and terminate one or 
more of the empty glumes only. The fertile flower terminating 
the spikelet is, in the normal genera, either perfectly hermaphro- 
dite, or, at any rate, as far as I have observed, has staminodia 
round the pistil. It is only in a few of the abnormal genera 
added to the tribe that there are strictly female spikelets. 
The normal genera of the tribe may be distributed in four 
rather distinct groups, though scarcely marked enough to be 
raised to the rank of subtribes; and to these we would add a few 
more or less abnormal genera, but little connected with each 
other, but all apparently more nearly allied to Panicer: than to 
any other tribe. 
In the first group, or Panicee proper, we have distinguished 
eleven genera—a number somewhat arbitrary ; for much might be 
said in favour either of uniting the whole into one vast genus 
Panicum, or of dividing them still further, as some have proposed, 
into about twice as many as those here adopted, the distinctive 
characters being often either very uncertain, or such as are not 
universally recognized as generic in the Order, 
