No. 25. 



TRICHLORIS VERTICILLATA Fourn. (Chloropsis Blanchardiana 



Gay in Herb.') 



Plant perennial, mostly glaucous, or light-green, or purplish in the inflorescence. 



Culms tufted from somewhat bulbous base, erect or sometimes prostrate below 

 and rooting at the lower nodes, terete, solid, smooth, 1 to 2? feet tall. 



Leaves; radical and from sterile culms, with compressed, hairy- fringed sheaths 

 and hispid, flat or somewhat re volute, slender-pointed blades 3 to 8 inches long; of 

 stem usually 4; lower sheaths equaling nodes, upper ones often much shorter, 

 striate, hispid, hairy along the margins, blade flat or V-shaped with revolute mar- 

 gins, hispid above and below and with scattered white hairs above the ligule, which 

 is a dense row of tine white hairs -3- line long. 



Inflorescence an umbellate cluster of 8 to 12 or more narrow, sessile, slightly 

 spreading spikes, 3 to 4 inches long, with the spikelets narrowly-sessile in two 

 rows on one side of the hispid rachis. 



Spikelets lance-linear, with one fertile and one sterile flower; first glume linear- 

 lanceolate, acute or short awned, hyaline, 1-nerved, i to ^ line long; second glume 

 ovate, f line long, with an awn of equal length; third or floral glume narrowly 

 lanceolate, scabrous on back, obscurely 3-nerved, 1^ lines long, terminating in 3 

 scabrous awns 5 to 9 lines long; palet lance-linear, ciliate at the rounded apex, 

 hyaline, 2-nerved, 1^ lines long; fourth (sterile) glume, cylindrical, filiform, 1 line 

 long, terminating in 3 hispid awns 3 to 6 lines long. 



Grain lance-elliptic, triangular in cross section, translucent, light yellow, witli 

 light orange chit, falling with the spikelet, entire except the persistent empty 

 glumes. 



PLATE XXV; a, and b, spikelets enlarged. 

 Texas, Arizona to Mexico. 



