GRAMINE^. (grass FAMILY.) 659 



A. D6nax, L. Very tall (10 - 18°) ; spikelets 3 - 4-flowered. — Closely re- 

 sembliug riiragmites commuuis. Cultivated for ornanieut, and naturalized 

 in Bedford Co., Va. {A. H. Curtiss.) (Nat. from Eu.) 



54. MUNROA, Terr. (PL 15.) 



Spikelets usually 3-flowered, few (2 - 4) and nearly sessile in the axils of 

 floral leaves ; flowers perfect, or the uppermost abortive. Empty glumes 

 lanceolate, acute, hyaline and 1-nerved; flowering glumes larger, 3-nerved. 

 rather rigid, the mid-nerve stout, excurrent, the lateral ones scarcely so. -^ 

 Low. or prostrate many-stemmed annuals, fasciculately branched, with crowded 

 short flat rigid or pungent leaves, the short sheaths strongly striate. (Named 

 for the English agrostologist, Maj.-Gen. William Munro.) 



1. M. squarrosa, Torr. Glaucous, somewhat pubescent and villous at 

 the nodes or glabrous ; leaves 3-12'' long. — Dry plains, central Kan. to the 

 Dakotas, west to Mont., Utah, and New Mex. 



55. KCELERIA, Pers. (PI. 10.) 



Spikelets 3 - 7-flowered, crowded in a dense and narrow spike-like panicle. 

 Glumes membranaceous, compressed-keeled, obscurely 3-nerved, barely acute, 

 or the flowering glume often mucronate or bristle-pointed ; the empty ones 

 moderately unequal, nearly as long as the spikelet. Stamens 3. Grain free. 



— Tufted with simple upright culms, the sheaths often downy; allied to Dac- 

 tylis and Poa. (Named for Prof. G. L. Koeler, an early writer on Grasses.) 



1. K. cristata, Pers. Culms 1-2° high ; leaves flat, the lower sparingly 

 hairy or ciliate ; panicle narrowly spiked, interrupted or lobed at base ; spike- 

 lets 2 -4-flowered; flowering glume acute or mucronate. — Var. gracilis, 

 Gray, with a long and narrow spike, the flowers usually barely acute. — Dry 

 hills, Peuu. to 111. and Kan., thence north and westward. (Eu.) 



56. EAT ONI A, Raf. (PI. 10.) 



Spikelets usually 2-flowered, with an abortive rudiment or pedicel, numer- 

 ous, in a contracted or slender panicle, very smooth. Empty glumes some- 

 what equal in length, but very dissimilar, a little shorter than the flowers ; 

 the lower narrowly linear, keeled, 1-nerved ; the upper broadly obovate, folded 

 round the flowers, 3-nerved on the back, not keeled, scarious-margined. Flow- 

 ering glume oblong, obtuse, compressed-boat-shaped, naked, chartaceous ; the 

 palet very thin and hyaline. Stamens 3. Grain linear-oblong, not grooved. 



— Perennial, tall and slender grasses, with simple tufted culms, and often 

 sparsely downy sheaths, flat lower leaves, and small greenish (rarely purplish) 

 spikelets. (Named for Prof. Amos Eaton, author of a popular Manual of the 

 Botany of the United States, which was for a long time the only geueral 

 work available for students in this country, and of other popular treatises.) 



* Upper emptj/ glume rounded -obovate and very obtuse ; panicle usually dense. 



1. E. obtusata, Gray. (PI. 10.) Panicle dense and contracted, somewhat 

 interrupted, rarely slender ; the spikelets crowded on the short erect branches ; 

 upper glume rough on the back ; flowers lance-oblong. — Dry soil, N. Penu. to 

 Fla., Mich., and tar westward. June. July. 



