TWO NEW DICGECIOUS GRASSES OF THE UNITED STATES. 499 
of Nuttall, who published an account of it, in his “ Genera,” as early as 1818, sor male plant has been collected by 
almost every botanist traversing those regions. The female plant had escaped the observers until it was described 
by Stendel, in the year 1855, from Drummond’ Texan specimens, as a totally ome plant and belonging even to a 
different tribe. Though Prof. Torrey had already, in Emory’s Report, 1848, sug ggested the probability of the Buffalo- 
grass being a Reaches plant, the possibility that Nuttall’s Sesleria dactyloides and Steudel’s Antephora azilliflora could 
be the male and the female of the same species was not even suspected, till finding both together in a collection sent 
by my brother, Henry Engelmann, who, as geologist, accompanied the topographical corps attached to the army of 
Utah, I was struck with their similarity. My surmise, much doubted at first, became a certainty when I discovered 
among some male plants, collected by A. Fendler, about Fort Kearney on the Platte River, a moneecious specimen, 
showing both male and female flowers on different stalks from the same rhizoma. A figure of this important specimen 
is given on Pl. XII. Fig. 3. 
That our plant is distinct from Sesleria has already been stated by Torrey (1. ¢. p. 154), and indeed by Nuttall 
himself (1. ¢. p. 65), and both have pointed to its affinity to Atheropogon or Chondrosium. The des escription now given 
fully confirms both positions. It also leaves no doubt a it is not an Antephora, nor at all paniceous. A new generic 
name, therefore, had to be ana and I have preferred to propose an abbreviated translation of the popular and widely 
known name of “ Buffalo-grass,” retaining of course N ae original specific appellation. The synonymes of the male 
plant, supplied through the wget of Prof. Gray, are uncertain, Kunth never having published such a name as Ca- 
nthera, which, moreover, is quite unmeaning ; nor can I learn that a genus Lasiostega has ever been — 
e Buffalo-grass grows in pe tufts, sending out stolons. These, in most herbarium specimens, a 
only a ri inches ne, with internodes of 4-2 inches in length ; Lindheimer, pri sends — from [434] 
New Braunfels, Tens with stolons 1-2 feet long, the inte Ro -¥ in: measuring over 3 and even as mu 
inches. The male plant seems to throw out more numerous runners than the Geka and may often cma and 
kill it out, on would account for the much greater scarcity of the latter. 
Leaves 2-4 inches long, 3-14 lines wide, sparsely hairy or ciliate or glabrous ; sheaths striate, glabrous, strongly 
bearded at the throat. 
owering stems of the male plant are 4-6 or rarely 8 inches high, mostly glabrous or very sparsely hairy, 
gener — hon the leaves, and bear 2 or 3 alternate oblique cmenided: spikes. These spikes are 3-6 lines long, 
and bea the lower, outer side of the flattened, dentate, pubescent rhachis 6-15 minutely puberulent spikelets, 
Sake - two rows; the uppermost spikelet is usually abortive, and is represented by a bristle. The spikelets are 
2 or rarely 3 lines long, with 2 or sometimes 3 subterete flowers ; they are, as usual among chlorideons grasses, som 
what obliquely ditontedl s the glumes are broader on their lower side, but turning upwards, towards the upper end of 
the spike, they cover the upper edge of the flowers, leaving the lower edge free. The smaller lower glume is, as in this 
whole tri ws of grasses, inside of the spike, and — pre upper one outside and much more conspicuous, 
r glume ovate-lanceolate, with a scarious margin, convex, scarcely carinate, one-nerved, obtuse or acutish or 
sracteaes one-third or one-fourth the length of ih flower ; on the uppermost spikelet of each spike, it is much larger, 
and almost equal to the upper glume. 
U glume twice as long as the lower one, much wider, ovate, obtusish, with a strong middle nerve which 
sometimes runs out into a point or a short awn between two membranaceous teeth ; in a specimen from Fort Kearney, 
I find on the lower side a second nerve running out into a lateral tooth ; a third nerve on the upper side is very indis- 
tinct ; other spikelets of the same specimen show the ordinary structure. 
r palea convex, obtusish, nse eee nerve in the lower flower running out into a mucro, in the upper 
one soap even with the membranaceous ms 
per palea as long as, or a little scooding , the lower one, which partly envelops it, 2-nerved, 2-carinate, obtuse 
and sath at tip 
Scales (odicuta) 2 at the margin, and inside of the lower palea, minute, triangular-truncate, undulate or emargi- 
Stamens 3, scarcely exceeding the pales; anthers linear, bifid at both ends, 1 line long ; filaments much 
shorter. Pollen alan of the dry anther, immersed in water, globular, smoothish, 0.017 line in diameter. [435] 
talk of the female plant is much shorter than the leaves, usually 1$-2 and very rarely 3-4 inches high; 
it is leafy the top, the broad, ventricose, many-nerved sheaths of the 2 or 3 uppermost leaves serving as involucres 
for the flower-heads. These heads, 3-3} lines long, are usually 2 in number, one almost sessile between both top 
leaves and on the side of the lower one, the other on a flattened aged on the side of the upper leaf ; sometimes a 
third head is noticed still higher, and on the side of the lowest on edicels of these heads are nothing but the 
common peduncle or rhachis terminating the stem, and the heads Soave correspond to as many lateral spikes of 
the male plant, in position as well as in structure ; they are only more contracted, consist of pi apie 
spikelets, and turn obliquely upwards, while the male spikes turn obliquely downward mber of 
spikelets does not exceed 3, the head is ventricose-cylindric, or, in fruit, subglobose ; but when rage OT is larger, 
