BOTANICAL GAZETTE. 259 
rounded on the back, smooth or smoothish and with the nerves 
indistinct below, above conspicuously 5-nerved and scabrous, 
terminated with a stiff, straight awn } line to 2 lines long; palet 
nearly as long as its glume, entire or obtusely 2-toothed at the 
apex, the keels ciliate or hispid-ciliate. 
This has been named in some collections Triticum (Agropy- 
rum) repens, var. tenerum. It is often difficult to distinguish it 
from that species except in wanting the running rootstock. It is 
common throughout the Rocky Mountains, and in bottom lands 
it is often cut for hay, of which it makes an excellent quality. 
Another very common Agropyrum of the mountains and 
plains, also valuable for forage and hay, and known among stock- 
men from Montana to New Mexico as “blue stem, or blue grass,” 
is the Agropyrum glaucun, R. & 8. of which the following is a 
description : 
Acropyrum gLAucum, R. & S.—Culms from running root- 
stocks, 1 to 3 feet high, erect, rigid, smooth, with about 3 erect, 
tigid, narrow leaves, 4 to 6 inches long: spike distichous, 4 to 
Inches long, 4 to 6 lines wide, generally close or compact: spike- 
lets 5 to 9-flowered, smoothish or sometimes pubescent ; outer 
glumes slightly unequal, narrowly lanceolate, acuminate or awn= 
pointed, the lower 4 to 5 lines, and the upper 5 to 6 lines long, 
the lower 1 to 3-nerved and the upper about 5-nerved, the lateral 
nerves mostly all on one side of the midrib ; flowering glumes 4 to 
6 lines long, lanceolate, obtusish, or acute, or awn-pointed, usu- 
ally sparsely pubescent, 5-nerved, the nerves indistinct below ; 
Palet about equalling its glume, rather acute, slightly bidentate, 
the keels hispid-ciliate, the back sparsely softly pubescent. 
1 The whole plant is usually glaucous. In rich soil the spike- 
€ts are sometimes double at the joints. 
Lowest Germination of Maize. 
BY E. LEWIS STURTEVANT. 
At the New York Agricultural Ex eriment Station we have 
mained the following dats relating to the germination of maize. 
v¢ temperatures given are of a thermometer with the bulb in 
With the seed used, and each degree carefully corrected with “ 
Standard, Readings were taken hourly from 7 A. M. to 11 and 12 
