No. 50. 

 MELICA PORTERI Scribner. 



Plant perennial. 



Rootfsfock slender, creeping, .scales distant. Roots very slender. 



Culms tufted, slender, erect, 3 to .3 feet high, unbranched, glabrous. 



Leaves of the stem 7 to 10; sheaths imbricated, sparingly backwardly scabrous, 

 margins grown together; blades to 12 inches long, upper sometimes shorter, 1 

 to 2 lines wide, flat, usually somewhat scabrous beneath, sparingly jjilose above. 

 Leaves of the root, with their sheaths, early decaying. 



Inflorescence paniculate. Panicle terminal, short-pedunculate, 8 to 12 inches 

 long; rachis terete, nearly glabrous; branches spreading in anthesis, afterwards 

 erect, 3 inches long or less, scattered, commonly 3 at each node, one much 

 smaller than the other. Spikelets borne singly on slender scabrous pedicels pilose 

 and abruptly bent at tlie apex. 



Spikelet 3- to 5-flowered, 4 to 7 lines long, slightly compressed, linear-oblong, 

 narrowed at base and apex. 



Glumes with green nerved bodj' and broad hyaline margins and apex; first 

 ovate, bluntly acute, 3 to 3 lines long, 1- to 5-uerved, middle nerve scabrous: second 

 similar, one-third longer, 7-to 9-nerved; third (flowering) elliptical -oblong, nar 

 rowed to the base and apex, about 3 lines long, body rather coriaceous, scabrous on 

 the back, with about 7 principal nerves and often with intermediate slender 

 ones, all converging toward the apex but not uniting and not traversing the 

 hyaline apex of the glume. 



Flowers hermaphrodite. Palet oblong-lanceolate when in position, acute, 

 ciliate on the 2 nerves, with additional inflexed membranaceous margins. 

 Stamens 3; anthers linear, 1 line long. Stigmas cylindrical. 



Orain (mature?) linear, 1 line long, droj^inng naked from the spikelet when 

 ripe; pericarp rather loose, wrinkled; rachilla not disarticulating. 



Plate L; a and b, spikelet opened to show the parts. The second flower at 

 least should have stigmas. The shorter glume in a is the outer one. 



