400 USFFUL PLANTS OF GUAM. 
ers abandoned clearings on many islands; but it is much taller and its 1-flowered 
spikelets are awned and are borne in a spreading panicle, while those of Imperata 
are not awned and are in a silvery cylindrical thyrsus with dark anthers and stigmas. 
The species is widely spread throughout the islands of the Pacific. It has been 
confused by Hackel with the closely allied northern species Vipheagrostis japonica. 
Its identity was first established by Warburg.¢ Distribution: from Java through 
Malaysia to Polynesia and Formosa. 
~ In Guam this grass is sometimes used for thatching, and is more durable than 
either coconut or nipa thatch. A roof of coconut thatch will last four years; one of 
nipa-palm leaflets will last from ten to twelve years; and one of neti will last longer than 
this.? In other islands of the Pacific it is also used for thatch, especially in Fiji, Samoa, 
and Rarotonga; and some of the Malanesians harden the straight light stems and use 
them as shafts for theirarrows. On the island of Guam large areas of ‘‘ neti’’ are fre- 
quently burned by hunters to drive out the deer which take refuge in them. The 
young shoots which spring up are eaten by deer, cattle, and buffaloes, but when it is 
fully grown it is too rough for fodder. The minute teeth which arm the margins of 
the leaves make them very sharp; and one is almost certain to be cut on the face or 
hands in passing through a thicket of this grass. It is on this account that the 
English-speaking inhabitants of the island call it ‘ sword-grass.”’ 
REFERENCES: 
Niphagrostis floridula (Labill.) Coville. 
Saccharum floridulum Labill. Sert. Austr. Caled. 13. t. 18. 1824. 
Miscanthus floridulus Warb.; K. Sch. & Laut. Fl. Deutsch. Schutzgebiet. in der 
Sudsee 166. 1901. 
The first species and type of the genus Miscanthus, established by Andersson in 1856, 
is M. capensis, a species which is not congeneric with those referred to the genus by 
later authors. The plants commonly included under Miscanthus are therefore left 
without a valid generic designation, and the name Niphagrostis (&iq@os, sword, and 
ay pworis, grass) is here proposed, the type species being floridulus, the citation to 
the original description of which is given above. Another well-known grass of the 
same genus, in frequent cultivation under the name Hulalia japonica, becomes 
Niphagrostis japonica (Thunb.) Coville (Saccharum japonicum Thunb., Eulalia 
japonica Trin., Miscanthus sinensis Anders. ).—Frederick V. Coville. 
Xylocarpus granatum. CANNON-BALL TREE, € 
Family Meliaceae. 
Local NAMEs.—Lalinyog, Lalinyog (Guam); Kaliunpag-sa-lati, Libato-pula 
(Philippines); Dabi (Fiji). 
A glabrous, evergreen, littoral tree, with a large, hard, brown, irregularly globose 
fruit with a thin rind, containing 6 to 12 large, angular, hard, corky seeds. Leaves 
alternate, pinnate, 2 to 6-foliate; leaflets stiff, opposite, entire, ovate or obovate, 
usually obtuse, very shortly petiolulate; panicles lax, axillary; flowers small, sweet- 
scented, yellowish or white, hermaphrodite, sometimes in simple racemes; calyx 
4-fid, short; petals 4, reflexed, contorted sinistrosely; stamens united into an urceolate- 
globose tube which is 8-toothed at apex, the teeth bipartite; anthers 8, 2-celled, just 
included, sessile at top of tube, alternating with the teeth; style short; stigma dis- 
coid; ovary 4-celled, 4-suleate; cells 2 to 8-ovuled; pericarp fleshy, dehiscing by 4 
valves opposite the obliterated dissepiments. 
A tree widely spread on tropical shores, common in India and Ceylon, the Malay 
Archipelago, North Australia, and on many islands of the Pacific. The astringent 
@See Schumann und Lauterbach, Die Flora der deutschen Schutzgebiete in der 
Sudsee, pp. 166, 167, 1901. 
®MS. notes furnished me by Don Justo Dungea, late justice of the peace of the 
island of Guam, and one of the principal coconut planters of the island. 
¢Trimen, Handbook Flora of Ceylon, vol. 1, p. 251, 1893. 
