176 Trans. Acad. Sci. of St. Louis. 



paper above-mentioned, and was very much surprised to learn 

 that the two plants I had collected at Columbia, Texas, for 

 two different species, had been described by Nuttall as Poa 

 capitata from specimens collected by him in Arkansas about 

 seventy years ago. 



Nuttall characterizes his Poa capitata as being dioecious 

 and viscid pilose, a fact which is all the more remarkable 

 in that the makers of the Kew Index have referred Nuttall' s 

 species to Eragrostis reptans Nees, a disposition wholly un- 

 warranted. A careful examination of my specimens revealed 

 the fact that what I had collected and proposed to describe as 

 two new species, were really staminate and pistillate plants of 

 one and the same species, the first with the elongated spikelets, 

 the staminate, the other with a capitate cluster of spikelets, 

 the pistillate, a fact I have had abundant proof of in exten- 

 sive field observations since learning of Nuttall' s Poa 

 capitata. 



Nuttall' s description of Poa capitata in the above-mentioned 

 paper is as follows : — 



" Dioica, viscido-piibens ; culrao reptante ; panicula foeminea subrotunda 

 lobata obtusa, mascula conferta; spiculis subduodecerafloris, lanceolatisj 

 foliis distichis brevibus. — Hah. On the sand-beaches of the Arkansas. 

 Flowering in July. . . . Annual and pilose . . . ; sheaths very short; 

 stipules obsolete, pilose; female flowers spiked, the spikes subcapitate 

 and lobed; male panicle acute, the spikelets less crowded, compressed, 

 larger than those which are styliferous, and all 3-nerved, after the man- 

 ner of this section, with which it arranges," 



Nuttall evidently, in the above, refers to the flowering 

 scales as being 3-nerved, and not to the spikelets, as worded 

 in the description. 



Since Nuttall' s Poa capitata had been reduced to Eragrostis 

 reptans in the Kew Index, and as very likely other related 

 species had been treated likewise, I was desirous of seeing as 

 much material of Eragrostis reptans as I could get, and also 

 of consulting all the descriptions of species reduced to that 

 species that were given in that work. 



Amongst the many specimens examined in the herbarium 

 of the Missouri Botanical Garden was one sheet of Poa 



