109 



STAPFIA, A NEW GENUS OF HELICES, AND 

 OTHER NOTEWORTHY GRASSES. 



By J. Burtt Davy. 



Stapfia. Inflorescence a terminal spike-like raceme, the upper 

 portion of the rachis bearing no spikelets, or only a terminal one, 

 but clothed with narrow empty glumes of different shape and texture 

 from the flower-inclosing glumes below. Spikelets few-flowered, 

 their glumes usualty all flower-inclosing except the uppermost 1 

 (rarely 2), flowering from below upwards. Flowers all hermaph- 

 rodite; glumes hyaline-scarious, amplexicaul, broadly flabellate, 

 flat except one narrowly infolded edge the other edge somewhat 

 oblique, 12-18-nerved, the nerves connected above by delicate 

 cross-veins. Palea like its glume but narrower, 4 (rarely 2) nerved- 

 Stamens 3. Styles 2, long, connate below, the upper two-thirds 

 barbellate. Fruit unknown. Annual. Leaves broad, short, acu- 

 minate, exceeding the short internodes; nerves not connected by 

 cross-veins. Peduncle short, sometimes bracteate; raceme usually 

 at first included. Rachilla apparently articulate between the 

 flowers; empty glume flat, terminal. Anthers rose-colored. 



A remarkable genus, differing from the other o or 6 Melicere in 

 having usually only 1 empty glume above the flowers. Related to 

 Anthochloa of the Andes of Peru and Bolivia, by the remarkably 

 broad, flabelliform glumes, and the absence of awns, but differing 

 from it in having the glumes many-nerved, in the almost entire 

 absence of empty glumes at the base of the spikelet,* and in the 

 longer styles. 



Named in honor of Dr. Otto Stapf, Assistant for India in the 

 Herbarium of the Royal Gardens, Kew, who has elaborated the 

 Grarninese for the Flora Capensis and (in collaboration with Sir 

 Joseph Hooker) for the Flora of British India. 



Among the bract-like empty glumes of the upper part of the 

 rachis, which do not subtend spikelets and the empty glumes sub- 



* The 2 or 3 uppermost spikelets are subtended by linear or lanceolate, 

 linear empty glumes. 



Erythea, Vol. VI, No. 11 [8 November, 1898]. 



