GRAMINEJE. (GRASS FAMILY.) 659 



A. D6NAX, L. Very tall (10 - 18) ; spikelets 3 - 4-flowered. Closely re- 

 sembling Phragmites communis. Cultivated for ornament, and naturalized 

 in Bedford Co., Va. (A. H. Curtiss.) (Nat. from Eu.) 



54. MXJNBOA, Torr. (PL 15.) 



Spikelets usually 3-flowered, few (2 - 4) and nearly sessile in the axils of 

 floral leaves; flowers perfect, or the uppermost abortive. Empty glumee 

 lanceolate, acute, hyaline and 1-nerved; flowering glumes larger, 3-nerved, 

 rather rigid, the mid-nerve stout, excurrent, the lateral ones scarcely so. 

 Low or prostrate many-stemmed annuals, fasciculately branched, with crowded 

 short flat rigid or pungent leaves, the short sheaths strongly striate. (Named 

 for the English agrostologist, Maj.-Gen. William Munro.) 



1. M. squarrdsa, Torr. Glaucous, somewhat pubescent and villous at 

 the nodes or glabrous ; leaves 3-12" long. Dry plains, central Kan. to the 

 Dakotas, west to Mont., Utah, and New Mex. 



55. KCELERIA, Pers. (PI. 10.) 



Spikelets 3 - 7-flowered, crowded in a dense and narrow spike-like panicle. 

 Glumes membranaceous, compressed-keeled, obscurely 3-nerved, barely acute, 

 or the flowering glume often mucronate or bristle-pointed ; the empty ones 

 moderately unequal, nearly as long as the spikelet. Stamens 3. Grain free. 



Tufted with simple upright culms, the sheaths often downy ; allied to Dac- 

 tylis and Poa. (Named for Prof. G. L. Koeler, an early writer on Grasses.) 



1. K. cristata, Pers. Culms 1-2 high ; leaves flat, the lower sparingly 

 hairy or ciliate ; panicle narrowly spiked, interrupted or lobed at base ; spike- 

 lets 2 -4-flowered; flowering glume acute or mucronate. Var. GRACILIS, 

 Gray, with a long and narrow spike, the flowers usually barely acute. Dry 

 hills, Penn. to 111. and Kan., thence north and westward. (Eu.) 



56. EAT ONI A, Raf. (PI. 10.) 



Spikelets usually 2-flowered, with an abortive rudiment or pedicel, numer- 

 ous, in a contracted or slender panicle, very smooth. Empty glumes some- 

 what equal in length, but very dissimilar, a little shorter than the flowers ; 

 the lower narrowly linear, keeled, 1-nerved ; the upper broadly obovate, folded 

 round the flowers, 3-nerved on the back, not keeled, scarious-margined. Flow- 

 ering glume oblong, obtuse, compressed-boat-shaped, naked, chartaceous ; the 

 palet very thin and hyaline. Stamens 3. Grain linear-oblong, not grooved 



Perennial, tall and slender grasses, with simple tufted culms, and often 

 sparsely downy sheaths, flat lower leaves, and small greenish (rarely purplish) 

 spikelets. (Named for Prof. Amos Eaton, author of a popular Manual of the 

 Botany of the United States, which was for a long time the only general 

 work available for students in this country, and of other popular treatises.) 



* Upper empty glume rounded-obovate and very obtuse ; panicle usually dense. 



1. E. Obtusata, Gray. (PI. 10.) Panicle dense and contracted, somewhat 



interrupted, rarely slender ; the spikelets crowded on the short erect branches ; 



upper glume rough on the back ; flowers lance-oblong. Dry soil, N. Penn. to 



Fla., Mich., and far westward- June, July. 



if 



