563 GIUMINE^. 



scarcely thickened at the nodes, which are approximated below, 

 but widely separated above, flat or channelled on one side in 

 the upper portion. Leaves very large and long, numerous, 

 erect, lower ones sometimes reduced to their sheaths; sheaths 

 thick and strong, about 6 inches long, closely but not entirely 

 enveloping the stem, quite smooth, striate ; ligule short, brown, 

 laciniate, scarious ; blade about 2 feet long, linear, very much 

 attenuated at the apex, tapering below, minutely denticulate 

 with forward points on the edges, smooth on both surfaces, 

 pale somewhat glaucous green, lighter beneath. Spikelets 

 very small, arranged in couples, one-stalked, containing 

 one male flower, the other sessile, with one hermaphrodite 

 and often one barren flower; the couples, to the number 

 of 3 or 4, articulated on alternate sides of a short, flattened, 

 jointed rachis clothed along the edges with long white 

 silky hairs tufted beneath the spikelets, forming a short 

 acute spike about \ — | inch long; the spikes arranged in 

 pairs on a common slender stalk, at the bent basal node of 

 which is a large, erect, acute, leafy, striate, orange-red, shining 

 bract, scarious at the edges, which encloses the pairs of spikef^ 

 before expansion ; the pairs of spikes very numerous, placed on 

 the somewhat zic-zac, elongated, smooth, slender, erect, flattened 

 branches of elongated panicles, which come o3 in clusters 

 from the axils of the upper loaves, the whole forming a very 

 large tufted, elongated somewhat drooping inflorescence, often 

 2 feet or more in length ; glumes nearly equal, acuminate, mem- 

 branous, smooth, purplish, boat-shaped, the lower one of the 

 sessile spikolet flattened on the back against the rachis and with- 

 out a mid- rib, those of the stalked spikelets with several parallel 

 strong veins ; pales of the lower spikelet 2, or with a third 

 representing a barren flower, very unequal, the lower very 

 small, deeply bifid with twolongcusps, from between which comes 

 off a long, slender, slightly kneed purple awn, about twice the 

 length of the glumes, and projecting considerably beyond iho 

 spikelet, the upper much larger, acute but without an awn, 

 very delicate and membranous, without veins ; in the flower of 

 the upper spikelet there is but a single membranous non-awned 



