No. 50. 
MELICA PORTERI Scribner. 
Plant perennial. 
Rootstock slender, creeping, scales distant. Roots very slender. 
Culms tufted, slender, erect, 2 to 3 feet high, unbranched, glabrous. 
Leaves of the stem 7 to 10; sheaths imbricated, sparingly backwardly scabrous, 
margins grown together; blades 6 to 12 inches long, upper sometimes shorter, 1 
to 2 lines wide, flat, usually somewhat scabrous beneath, sparingly pilose above. 
Leaves of the root, with their sheaths, early decaying. 
Inflorescence paniculate. Panicle terminal, short-pedunculate, 8 to 12 inches 
long; rachis terete, nearly glabrous; branches spreading in anthesis, afterwards 
erect, 3 inches long or less, scattered, commonly 2 at each node, one much 
smaller than the other. Spikelets borne singly on slender scabrous pedicels pilose 
and abruptly bent at the apex. 
Spikelet 3- to 5-flowered, 4 to 7 lines long, slightly compressed, linear-oblong, 
narrowed at base and apex. 
Glumes with green nerved body and broad hyaline margins and apex; first 
ovate, bluntly acute, 2 to 3 lines long, 1- to 5-nerved, middle nerve scabrous; second 
similar, one-third longer, 7-to 9-nerved; third (flowering) elliptical-oblong, nar 
rowed tothe base and apex, about 3 lines long, body rather coriaceous, scabrous on 
the back, with about 7 principal nerves and often with intermediate slender 
ones, all converging toward the apex but not uniting and not traversing the 
hyaline apex of the glume. 
Flowers hermaphrodite. Palet oblong-lanceolate when in position, acute, 
ciliate on the 2 nerves, with additional .inflexed membranaceous margins. 
Stamens 3; anthers linear, 1 line long. Stigmas cylindrical. 
Grain (mature?) linear, 1 line long, dropping naked from the spikelet when 
ripe; pericarp rather loose, wrinkled; rachilla not dtsarticulating. 
Puate L; a and b, spikelet opened to show the parts. The second flower at 
least should have stigmas, The shorter glume in a is the outer one, 
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