192 TUE TRUE GRASSES. 



tries excepting Australia and South Africa. Tall, rigid, 

 perennial grasses. 



Sec. I. Sitanion Eafiu. (as a genus) {Poly anther ix 

 Nees). Eacliis articulate ; empty glumes usually two- 

 to inany-cleft, long-awned. 



Sec. II. Clinelymus. llachis continuous ; empty and 

 flowering glumes awned. 



Sec. III. Psammelymus. Like Sec. II, but the empty 

 and flowering glumes awnless. To this section belongs 

 E. arena ri us L., which has long, creeping rhizomes, stiff 

 leaves, elongated ligules, and more downy flowering 

 glumes. On the banks of the North and Baltic Seas, 

 rarely inland, thence extending through Russia and 

 North Asia to North America. Very well adapted to 

 binding drifting sands, and often planted for this pur- 

 pose. In Iceland bread is made from the fruit. 



289. (276) Asprella W. {Hystrix Monch, Gymnostichum 

 Schreb.). Like the preceding, but the spikelets are 

 usually in pairs on short pedicels ; empty glumes want- 

 ing or appearing as simple rudiments in the lowest spike- 

 lets of each spike. 



Species four, two in N. America [{A. Hystrix Willd. 

 and A. Californica Benth.)], one in Siberia, and one in 

 New Zealand. 



Sub- tribe F. — Parianeae. 



Spikelets usually in sixes at each joint of the rachis, forming a false 

 whorl which consists of two opposite groups of three; in one the 

 middle spikelet (primary branch) is 2 and in the other 8 ; all the 

 lateral spikelets are 8 on broad pedicels which are grown together; 

 empty glumes (apparently) decussate with the flowering ones. The 

 S spikelet stands farther in. The terminal spikelet is solitary, 

 large, $ , with opposite empty glumes in the median line of the 

 flowering glumes. All the spikelets are awnless. Stamens 10-40 in 

 each * flower. Fruit as in 1'riticce. 



290. (31) Pariana Aubl. Grasses with broad, some- 

 what petiolate leaves. The $ spikelets form an invo- 

 lucre around the ? and fall away with it. 



Species ten, in tropical South America. Eremitis 

 Doll, appears to be a species of this genus whose flowers 

 are aborted, having only one stamen in each $ flower. 



