254 TKiANDRiA DiGiNiA. Anihistbia. 



Culms annual, erect, or leaning, geniculate, smooth, and colour- 

 ed; from twelve to twenty-four inches high — Leaves ensiforni, soft 

 and hairy. Sheaths much shorter than tlie jo.ints. — Faiiicks co- 

 pious, hirsute, composed of numerous small unibells and these in 

 general of live or nnore umbellets, the former with a common 

 cymbiform, bristly involucre, and the latter with a small, proper 

 characteiis:ic involucre, equally bristly; all the bristles have a lound 

 bulbous base. — Umhellets five-flowered ; the two hermaphrodite ones 

 auned, and the three male ones pedicelled, and awniess ; one of 

 the former is sessile below, with a pedicelled male one by it ; the 

 other elevated on a common peduncle, embraced by the other two 

 male ones on their proper pedicels, in all of them the calyx is 

 two-valved, no corol, the arista in the hermaphrodite flowers ex- 

 cepted. 



Obs. This species may be immediately distinguished by its umbel- 

 lets being composed of two hermaphrodite awned florets, and three 

 male ones. In all the rest, which 1 have met witb there is one 

 awned hermaphrodite, and six male, or neuter florets in the um- 

 bellet. 



5. A. prostrata. Linn. Sp. PI. ed. Willd. iv. 901. 



Creeping. Leaves scarcely longer than their sheaths. Lwolucres 

 smooth. Accessary Jforets male, with a two-valved hairy calyx and 

 one-valved awnless corol. 



A common grass, delighting in rich pasture ground. 



Culms creeping, or leaning on other plants, filiform, ramous, wind- 

 ing from joint to joint, round, smooth, from one to three feet long. — 

 Leavesbdow, and on leafy shoots bifarious, small, particularly the flo- 

 ral ones, smooth.— i^eaMs short, compressed. — Panicles thin, leafy. 

 — Flowers numerous, collected in little pedicelled, involucred fasci- 

 cles from the axils of the exterior leaves. Fascicles, or umbellets, 

 their peduncles are jointed near the apex, and from thence upw ards 

 embraced by a long, boat- shaped sheath or involucre. Flowers, of the 



