﻿Two new Grasses from Van Cortlandt Park, New York City. 



By Eugene P. Bicknell. 

 (Plates 328, 329.) 



Savastana N AS HI I. 



Perennial from slender creeping rootstocks ; culm simple, erect, 

 6-10 dm. tall, smooth and glabrous ; sheaths smooth and glab- 

 rous, closely embracing the culms, all, or all but the upper one, 

 arising from near the base of the culm, elongated, the upper one 

 sometimes 30 cm. long, much overlapping, the exposed inter- 

 spaces 5-1 5 cm. in length ; principal leaves 5-8, ascending or erect, 

 narrowly linear from a narrowed base, tapering to an attenuate 

 apex, 3-5 mm. wide, 1-3 dm. long, much longer than the inter- 

 spaces, the penultimate leaf usually longest, those below gradually 

 shorter, one or more basal ones abruptly much reduced and nearly 

 bladeless; lower surface of the leaf-blades bright shining green, 

 upper surface dull green and glabrous or with some obscure pu- 

 bescence, the rough edges scarcely involute when dry except at 

 the scabrous apex ; lower leaves at flowering-time becoming dry 



and narrowly involute ; ligule from 2 mm. long on the lower leaves 

 to 7 mm. long on the uppermost, the margins becoming ciliate, 

 pubescent ; panicle slenderly long-exserted, very loose and open- 

 often one-sided, 1.3-4.8 dm. long, the very delicate hairlike 

 branches simple or remotely short-branched, 8-23 cm. long, in 

 about four distant main pairs below the drooping top of the pan- 

 icle, the lower pairs 5-8 cm. apart, all loosely spreading or ascend- 

 ing and bearing the spikelets above the middle in delicate monili- 

 form pendulous sprays; spikelets 5-8 mm. long, 1.6-3 mm. wide ; 

 lower glumes somewhat unequal, the inner surpassing the outer 

 I-I.5 nim., delicately membranous and silvery hyaline, 3-nerved, 

 the outer nerves often nearly obsolete on the narrower first glume, 

 the second glume 3 mm. wide, tapering from about the middle to 

 an attenuate apex; flowering-glumes about 5 mm. long, narrower 

 and more gradually acuminate than in 5. odorata, 5-nerved, charta- 

 ceous, chestnut-brown, often obscurely puberulent-roughened, 

 minutely awned from the acuminate bifid apex ; palets cleft at the 

 apex into slender teeth ; fertile flower hairy-pubescent at the top 

 of the minutely awned outer scale ; each flower with a minute tuft 

 of hairs at its base; sterile culms similar to those of S. odorata but 

 taller, its more numerous leaves longer and more acuminate. 

 (Plate 328.) 



Discovered in Van Cortlandt Park, New York City, July II, 

 1897, freshly in flower and growing plentifully about the weedy 

 border of an alder thicket close to a brackish marsh. Near by was 



(104) 



