190 MISC. PUBLICATION 200, IT. S. DEPT. OF AGRICULTURE 



California, occasionally established eastward; tropical America; intro- 

 duced from the warm regions of the Old World. Frequently culti- 

 vated for ornament, including var. versicolor (Miller) Stokes, 

 with white-striped blades. In the Southwest the culms are used for 

 lattices, mats, and screens, and in the construction of adobe huts. In 

 Europe the culms are used for making the reeds of clarinets and 

 organ pipes. 



GYNERIUM Humb. and Bonpl. 



Plants dioecious; spikelets several-flowered, the pistillate with 

 long-attenuate glumes and smaller long-silky lemmas, the staminate 

 with shorter glumes and glabrous lemmas. Tall perennial reeds with 

 plumelike panicles. Type species, Gynerium saccharoides (G. sagiita- 

 tum). Name from Greek gune, female, and erion, wool, referring to 

 the woolly pistillate spikelets. 



Gynerium sagittatum (Aubl.) Beauv. Uva grass. Culms as much 

 as 10 or 12 m tall, clothed below with the overlapping old sheaths, 



Figure 371.— Cortaderia sclloana. Pistillate (9) and staminate (rf 1 ) panicles, X 1. (Silveus 308, Tex.) 



the blades having fallen ; blades sharply serrulate, commonly 2 m long, 

 4 to 6 cm wide, forming a great fan-shaped summit to the sterile culms, 

 panicle pale, plumelike, densely flowered, 1 m or more long, the main 

 axis erect, the branches drooping. % — Occasionally cultivated 

 for ornament in greenhouses. River banks and wet ground, tropical 

 America. 



25. CORTADERIA Stapf. Pampasgrass 



Spikelets several-flowered; rachilla internodes jointed, the lower 

 part glabrous, the upper bearded, forming a stipe to the floret; 

 glumes longer than the lower florets; lemmas of pistillate spikelets 

 clothed with long hairs. Large tussock grasses, with leaves crowded 

 at the base, the blades elongate, narrow, attenuate, the margins 

 usually serrulate; panicle large, plumelike. Type species, Cortaderia 



