34 MR. G. BENTHAM ON GRAMINES. 
l. Remar, Flügge.—This old-established and universally 
acknowledged genus has generally been limited to two tropical 
and subtropical American species, with a peculiar slender habit 
and inflorescence, and characterized by having only one empty 
glume below the flowering one, and by the constant reduction of 
the number of stamens to two. It has since, however, been as- 
certained that several species which cannot well be separated from 
Paspalum have only a single lower empty glume ; and Doell has 
distinguished Reimaria chiefly by the reduction of the stamens, 
D or with the form of the spikelets more acuminate and 
more closely appressed to the rhachis than in any Paspalum. He 
has added, under the name of R. aberrans, a third species, which, 
with a more vigorous habit, rather invalidates the natural di- 
stinction from Paspalum, but has all the characters of Reimaria; 
and Munro recognizes a fourth species, allied to R. aberrans, but 
with only two, or at most three, spikes to the panicle and a 
much thicker rhachis, in the Florida plant distributed by Curtis 
with the number 3566 as Paspalum vaginatum, but probably not 
the one entered under that name in Chapman's ‘ Flora of the 
Southern United States! It occurs also in Wright's Cuban 
collection under n. 3854, and may be characterized as R. oli- 
gostachya, Munro, spicis in pedunculo 2 rarius 3 (nee 6-15), 
rhachi dilatata spiculis sublatiore. The true Paspalum vagina- 
tum, Sw., is a synonym of P. distichum, Linn. 
2. Paspatum, Linn., ranks among the large genera of tropical 
Grammes, and in respect of the greater number of species.is a 
natural one, readily distinguished from Panicum by the inflo- 
rescence and by the technical character of the deficieney of the 
small lowest glume. It is now, however, ascertained that neither 
character is quite constant. A few Panica of the section Bra- 
chiaria have the inflorescence of Paspalum ; and the lowest glume 
is frequently reduced to a small callus, or is entirely deficient in 
the section Digitaria ; and the consequence has been, that several 
species have been referred by some botanists to the one genus 
and by others to the other. These ambiguous species appear, 
however, to be best placed in Panicum ; and all true Paspala bave 
the spikelets sessile or nearly so, in two or four rows along the 
lower or outer side of the rhachis of the spikes or simple branches 
of the panicle, and they show no trace of the small lowest glume 
of Panicum. Thus defined, the number of species may be esti- 
mated at about 160, by far the greater proportion of them tro- 
