PLATE 153. 



PANICUM LATICOMUM, NEES. (Fl. Cap. Vol. VII. , p. 401). 

 Nat. Order Gramineee. 



PERENNIAL. CULMS ascending, divided above the base into somewhat spread- 

 ing, long, leafy flowering branches, slender, ij to 2 feet long, minutely hairy or 

 glabrous, many-noded, internodes exserted ; sheaths tight, thin, striate, hairy, 

 often with tubercle-based hairs or glabrescent except at the nodes and near the 

 junction with the blade ; ligule a minutely ciliolate rim. Blades spreading, 

 lanceolate from a rounded base, acutely acuminate, ij to 3 inches, by ^ to \ inch, 

 flat, very thin, sparingly and finely hairy, margins scabrid. 



PANICLE erect, very lax, delicately and divaricately branched, about J foot 

 long ; axis filiform, terete and smooth below, angular and finely scabrid -above ; 

 branches in fascicles of 4-2 or solitary, unequal, at length spreading, finely 

 filiform to capillary, very laxly divided, often from I to 2 inches above the base ; 

 branchlets and pedicels extremely fine, scaberulous, lateral pedicels 1 to 4 lines 

 long, tips scarcely thickened. 



SPIKELETS oblong, acute at both ends, slightly more than I line long, glabrous, 

 green. 



GLUMES, very thinly herbaceous ; lower broadly ovate, subobtuse, J line long, 

 3-nerved ; vpper one somewhat remote from the lower, oblong, acute, almost I line 

 long, 5-nerved, middle nerve scaberulous above. Florets, loiver barren ; valve like 

 the upper glume, but slightly longer ; pale \ the length of the valve. Perfect 

 floret oblong, obliquely apiculate or acute, equally or slightly exceeding the upper 

 glume ; valve subcoriaceous, whitish, faintly 5-nerved ; anthers \ line long; grain 

 obovoid, J line long, white. 



Habitat : NATAL, Shady woods near Durban, Drege 4289 ; coistland, 

 S>tthc.flrid ; and without precise locality, Gerrard S'J ; Berea, 150 feet alt , March, 

 593(5. 



' The fruiting florets often separate from the remainder of the spikelet, which 

 remains for a while attached to the pedicel, but falls at length as a whole. The 

 habit is not unlike that of Isachne albens, Trin." 



Drawn from Wood's specimen, the only one in the Government Herbarium. 



Fig. 1, Portion of leaf with ligule ; 2, pedicels and spikelets ; 3, lower glume ; 4, upper 

 glume ; n, lower valve ; 6, pale ; 7, upper valve ; 8, pale ; 9, lodicules ; 10, stamens, ovary 

 style and stigma. All enlarged. 



