259 
of its status as a native of New South Wales. In fact it was 
collected as long ago as 1823 by that indefatigable collector 
Dr. Sieber at Port Jackson. He distributed it in his 
* Acrostotheca”’ under No. 72 and Nees named it Panicum gracile 
Gin Sprengel, Syst. Veg. iv. ii. 33), but changed it subsequently to 
Panicum subtile, possibly because there was already a Panicum 
gracile in the field. He calls it (1. ¢.), Panicum subtile, R. Br., bu 
h e came to connect it with Robert Brown is not clear, as there is 
no evidence of Brown having known it. Steudel on the other 
a quotes it as Panicum es Sieb. ex Nees [Syn. yram., 
41}, Curiously enough Sieber’s specimen and the name “escaped 
entham, so that the ey are not accounted for in the Flora 
Ageia ee ; nor in fact has the plant chanel collected again in 
Australia until quite recently. e reason why the species 
dropped so completely out of the agrostological literature was no 
doubt that it was never described pecinee and soon became lost in 
synonymy. Steudel in the 2nd edition of his Nomenclator 
- Botanicus [1842], identified it with Panteas distachyum, while in 
his Synopsis Plantarum Graminearum, p. 41 ae i appeared 
under Panicum bicorne, as P. subtile, Nees in Sieb. f, Ive AaOH. 
no. 72, with this note “ non differt (i.e. a P. bier) nisi racemis 
magis laxifloris, cf. P. didactylon, Kunth.” Ther justifica~ 
tion for its identification with Panicum distach ms 5s “On the 
other hand, it is indeed indistinguishable from eds didactylon, 
Kunth (1833) = Digitaria didactyla, Willd. (180 This was 
described from a plant collected by Bory St. Victuat in Mauritius 
in 1801 or 1802, and it has since been repeatedly ens in that 
island as well as in Réunion and Madagascar. e thus know it 
from the Mascarenes, Tonkin and New South Wales, and the 
probability is that it is more widely distributed throughout this 
area than its occurrence in herbaria would suggest. It may have 
been overlooked because it was mistaken for one of the more 
common tropical species of Digitaria, or indeed it may hide under 
one of the species described by Biise from the Malay pega a 
and not represented at Kew. Sieber either received it fro 
Mauritius from his collectors Hilsenberg and Bojer or collected it 
himself during his short stay in that island early 4 in 1823 ae 
distributed it subsequently in his “ Herb. Fl. Maurit.” under no. 
This number does not seem to have been named until Steudel in hig 
* Nomenclator ” eet referred to it as “ Panicum bicorne, Sieber 
Hrbr. Maurit. no. 42 et? Kunth, En. i. 83),” an unfortunate 
identification, as "Kunth’s Panicum bicorne is based on Paspalum 
bicorne, Lam., an Indian grass of clearly different affinity, and has 
in any case priority over “ Panicum bicorne, Sieb.” Bojer in_ his 
“ Hortus Mauritianus” (1837) has no Digitaria didactyla, whilst 
Baker in his “ Flora of Mauritius and the Seychelles” enumerates 
it as Panicum didactylum, Kunth, without further comment. 
We have therefore accounted for the es: synonymy for the 
Blue Couch Grass of New South Wales 
Digitaria didactyla, Willd. Enum. Hort. Berol. (1809), p. 91— 
Panicum gracile, Nees in Sprengel, Syst. Veg. vol. iv. pars. ii. 
(1827), p. 33, non R. Br. —Panicum subtile, Nees in Flora (1828), 
p- 300 (nomen) —Panicum didactylum, Kunth, Rey. Gram. (1839) 
