502 TWO NEW DICGCIOUS GRASSES OF THE UNITED STATES. 
been able to examine Berlandier’s specimens, female plants in flower, and those of Lindheimer, who collected both 
sexes, the females more abundantly than the males. The ripe fruit is unknown to me. 
Stems 5-8 inches high, much branched, erect or often at last decumbent and rooting; upper branches mostly 
short, 4-6 lines long. 
Leaves short, rarely more than 3 lines long, very rigid, strongly nerved, apparently permanent in winter, mostly 
crowded at the ends of the stems and branches. The upper leaves all bear axillary buds more or less developed. 
Spikelets (between 3 and 4 lines long) solitary, terminal, enclosed by the uppermost leaves, which form a complete 
and uninterrupted transition to the floral envelopes, the uppermost leaf, without the intercession of glumes, repre- 
senting the lowest palea of the spikelet. This uppermost leaf or lowest palea has a doubtful and intermediate char- 
acter, and might be taken for one or the other, or for a glume, whenever it is empty; but often it includes an hyaline 
ale, which cannot be anything else but an upper palea, and therefore characterizes this lowest organ of the spikelet 
as the lower palea of the lowest always incomplete and neutral flower. It cannot be supposed that a glume 
is missing or abortive, as we can follow the regular succession of bud-bearing leaves to this lowest floral leaf or [438] 
palea. The upper palea of this lowest flower, when present, is usually extremely thin and transparent ; it is 
small or large, flat or reflexed, nerveless or (very rarely, like the other upper palez) bicarinate ;? it is entire, lance- 
olate, or ovate, or emarginate, or bilobed, or sometimes divided into two unequal lanceolate parts, placed side by side, 
and in some flowers (see Pl, XIII. Fig. 6) laterally protruding from the base of the lower palea and rather oddly 
placed on both sides of the spikelet. 
The second flower is like all the others pedicelled, and is mostly perfect, that is, staminate or pistillate ; in a 
very few instances (see Pl. XIII. Fig. 5, and PI. ;: 20), it was found neutral and either with a somewhat 
foliaceous lower palea, or with both palee smaller than in : other flowers ; rarely it is reduced to a single palea, 
which is herbaceous or membranaceous; in a single instance it was almost entirely suppressed, and the third flower, 
above and on the same side as the lowest one, appeared to be the second. The rare case where two single, empty 
palez alone are left of the two lowest flowers approaches nearest to the regular structure of grass flowers; these palee 
then assume the place and apparent function of glumes, and the spikelet then resembles that of Keleria, for example, 
in the arrangement of its parts. The normal variability in the formation of the floral envelopes of this grass thus 
furnishes an interesting clew to the morphology of these organs. The third flower, usually well developed, is some- 
times (oftener in the female than in the male plant) reduced to a mere rudiment. 
In female plants I have never seen more than 2 pistillate flowers, and very rarely a rudimentary fourth flower; 
male plants show often 3 staminiferous flowers, usually with an upper abortive one. The spikelet therefore is destitute 
of glumes, and consists of 3-5 flowers, of which always the lowest, sometimes the second, and usually the uppermost 
one, are neutral or rudimentary, and of which 1-3 of the middle ones bear stamens or pistils. 
e lower palea of the fully developed flowers is ovate-lanceolate, obtuse at the scarious point, and envelops 
not only the upper palea but also the base of the upper flowers; it is faintly 9-11-nerved in the upper and indistinctly 
3-nerved in the lower half, thus representing, as it would seem, both parts of the leaf, the sheath and the blade; 
nothing like a ligula, however, can be found. 
The upper palea is narrower and a little longer than the lower one, especially in the male flowers, "te [439] 
and scarious at tip, and in the female closely envelops the pistils. In the staminate flower it is bicarinate o 
the back; in the pistillate flower these keels are developed into wings, ee are rolled around the upper Sede as is 
indented is in the diagrams. No scales (lodicule) were seen in either flow 
ns scarcely longer than the pale ; anthers linear, deeply bilobed at both ends, longer than the filaments. 
In the eauadtinds flower 3 minute triangular bodies seem to represent the stamens 
he stipitate ovary is elongated, triangular, with one angle towards the lawie, and two towards the keels of the 
upper palea ; it is deeply bifid, the lobes terminating into straight erect styles. Simple hairs of the feathery stigma 
scarcely dentate. 
The systematic position of this grass is certainly a doubtful one, and the opinion which I venture to offer, that 
its next allies must be looked for among the Chloridew, a tribe principally distinguished by its one-sided compound 
spikes, may appear paradoxical. I take 5 it to be the most reduced form of this tribe, where a single and incomplete 
spikelet only is left of the one-sided spikes. Thus a would find its place near the similarly creeping 
Cynodon, and with those other seaside-grasses, the Sparti 
Happily, to confirm my position, I find in Torrey’s fale established genus Munroa (Whipple’s Botany in Pacif. 
R. R. Rep. iv. 158), the old Crypsis squarrosa, Nutt., an intermediate not quite so much reduced form of a grass. 
Munro is evidently nearly allied to Monanthochloé, but has, instead of one, three spikelets, included between the 
uppermost leaves, on a terminal rhachis; two lateral oblique and one-sided, and the terminal one straight. Prof. 
Torrey has already noticed the oblique position of the glumes of the lateral spikelets, which, together with the one- 
sided paar on the rhachis, is characteristic of Chloridew. The terminal spikelet is more regularly formed, as is also 
8 In this case the lower palea also is less leaf-like, and has only a short foliaceous cusp. 
