68 MEMOIRS FROM THE DEPARTMENT OF BOTANY OF COLUMBIA COLLEGE. 
[Puare 21.] 
21. Polygonum persicarioides Humboldt, Bonpland & Kunth. 
Polygonum persicarioides Humboldt, Bonpland & Kunth, Noy. Gen. 2: 197 (1817); 
Sprengel, Syst. 2: 257; Chamisso & Schlectendal, Linnaea, 3:44; Meisner, Monog. 69, 
in Mart. Fl. Bras. 5: 16, and in DC. Prodr. 14: 117. 
Perennial, nearly glabrous or strigillose. Stem erect or decumbent and creeping, 
3-7 dm. long, simple or branched either above or from the base; leaves lanceolate or 
often linear-lanceolate, 5-20 em. long, .4—2 em. broad, acuminate at both ends, glabrous 
or pubescent with scattered hairs, especially on the midrib, ciliate, punctate, short- 
petioled or subsessile; ocreae cylindric or funnelform, 1-2 cm. long, glabrous or sparsely 
strigillose, inconspicuously fringed with short bristles; inflorescence paniculate, more or 
less compound, sometimes nearly simple, the ultimate divisions ending in narrow 
spicate racemes; racemes erect, 2-6 cm. long, narrowly oblong or linear, rather loosely 
flowered; ocreolae funnelform, oblique, 8 mm. long, fringed with a few short bristles or 
naked, often glandular or scurfy about the summit; pedicels about 3 mm. long, more or 
less angled; calyx 2-3 mm. long, rose color tinged with green, five-parted to below the 
middle, the segments oblong, obtuse; stamens eight or fewer, included; style 1-1.5 mm. 
long, two or three-parted to near the base; achenes lenticular, biconvex and more or less 
gibbous, or triquetrous, 2.5-3 mm. long, narrowly ovoid or sometimes broadly oblong, 
rather long-pointed, black, somewhat granular but shining. 
Nebraska, Texas, New Mexico and Mexico, also in Bolivia, Chili, Paraguay and 
the Argentine Republic. 
