28 



corded as Panicmn dicJiototnum and P. viscidum^ respectively, the 

 latter being very decidedly the favorite. 



The latter, Pam'euni viscidum. (fig. 12), is a grass which grows in 

 large tufts or clumps of from 20 to 30 stems, from 2 to 4 feet high, or 



perhaps 5 feet where it is found in 

 thickets or fence corners. The 

 whole plant is thickly covered with 

 long, soft, velvety, somewhat sticky 

 hairs. The stems are at first not 

 branched and have from 8 to 10 

 leaves shaped like a narrow peach 

 leaf, those at the top being very 

 small. In summer and fall these 

 stems branch from each joint and 

 the branches keep on branching 

 again and again, producing large 

 numbers of small leaves and giving 

 the plant a very bushy and tangled 

 appearance. The seeds are borne 

 in a small head at the top of each 

 stem and later o:^ each branch, these 

 heads being something like a very 

 small and loose sorghum head or 

 more like a head of broom-corn 

 millet or hog millet. 



The other grass, Panicum dicho- 

 toirnciu. is much like P(mi cum visci- 

 dum^ but is very much smaller, scarcely over IS inches high, and grow- 

 ing in smaller tufts. The stems are slender and weak, and the plant is 

 not at all hairy. It also branches f reelj^ in summer and fall. Where 

 growing in the sunshine the stems are usualty purplish. 



Occasionally eggs are laid on other grasses or plants, but never on 

 cranberry leaves. They are laid chiefly at night on the drier parts 

 of the bog, in the edges of the leaf between the upper and the under 

 surface, to the number of from one to five in one blade; the single 

 number is much the more usual. When deposited the egg is very 

 flat, almost three-sixteenths of an inch long, less than half as wide, 

 slightly kidney shaped and of a very light yellowish brown color. 

 The disk of the egg is closely and roughly marked or netted without 

 definite pattern. 



Remedial measures. — The character of the remedy to be adopted fol- 

 lows from the egg-laying habits of the species. Allow none of the 

 host grasses to maintain themselves on the bogs and burn over the 

 dams during the winter while the bogs are flowed. From the fact that 

 the very young katydids are never found on flowed bogs except at the 



178 



Fig. 12. — Tip of a spray of Panicum viscidum- 

 reduced (after Smith). 



