HITCHCOCK AND CHASE—NORTH AMERICAN PANICUM. 13 
PANICULATA. 
ll. P. dichotomum. 
12. P. clandestinum. 
13. P. capillare. 
14. P. patens. 
15. P. dactylon = =Capriola dactylon (L.) Kuntze. 
hy 
16. P. miliaceum. 
17. P. latifolium. 
18. P. brevifolium. 
19. P.arborescens ¢=P. brevifolium L. 
20. P. virgatum. 
THE TYPE OF PANICUM. 
As stated above, the historic type species of Panicum is Chaetochloa 
italica, the common foxtail millet. This is the plant to which the 
name Panicum was universally applied by Latin writers as far back 
as our record extends. As the idea of genera developed, botanists, 
until the time of Tournefort, included under the general name Pan- 
icum other species with a similar inflorescence. This author included 
several rather diverse species, but the one which he chose for his 
illustration and which we may consider his type was the same well- 
known plant, the Panicum of the ancients (Chaetochloa italica). 
Another.ancient name, Milium, was applied to a widely cultivated 
cereal (Panicum miliaceum), and later, as the idea of genera grew, the 
name was made to include the sorghums, and was thus used by 
Tournefort,? who, however, figured P. miliaceum as his type species. 
Linneus at first accepted these two genera in the historic sense, 
and the type of his Panicum, since he referred to Scheuchzer, was the 
plant now called Chaetochloa viridis. Later, however, his ideas under- 
went a change, until finally in 1753 he had united under the generic 
name Panicum the twenty species mentioned above, including, as 
will be seen, not only the historic type of Panicum and its allies, and 
another common species (Echinochloa crusgalli) referred to Panicum 
by Tournefort ® and other pre-Linnean botanists, but also several 
new species, and, most noteworthy of all, Panicum miliaceum, the 
type of the old genus Milium. He, however, still retained the name 
Milium for another genus (including M. effusum and M. confertum). 
Since no generic descriptions are given in the Species Plantarum, it is 
necessary to consult the first succeeding edition of the Genera Plan- 
tarum, namely the fifth, published in 1754. In this place Linneus 
still credits the genus Milium to ‘‘Tournef. 298,” though he has 
@Trimen (Journ. Linn. Soc. Bot. 24: 155. 1888.) states that this species, as de- 
scribed in Linnzeus’s Flora Zeylanica, upon which is based P. arborescens Iu., is P. 
ovahifolium Poir, (P. brevifolium 1..), and that the specimen in the Linnean Herba- 
rium belongs to the same species, Mixed with the above-mentioned herbarium speci- 
men is a fragment of an Arundinaria, which probably accounts for the specific name 
and the reference to its lofty stature. 
b Inst. Rei Herb. 54. pl. 298. f. L. 1700. 
