No, 37. 
BOUTELOUA ERIOPODA Torrey. 
Perennial, strongly rooted. 
Culms rather weak, straggling, often decumbent and rooting at the lower 
joints, 1 to 3 feet long, lower part of the culm and sheaths woolly-pubescent, par- 
ticularly near the roots. . 
Leaves of the stem 5 or 6; blades narrow, short, 2 to 3 inches long, 1 to 2 lines 
wide, or from proliferous shoots, sometimes from 4 to 6 inches long; sheaths much 
shorter than the internodes. 
Panicle racemose, 3 to 6 inches long, composed of 5 or 6 one-sided nearly 
sessile spikes; these 1 to 2 inches long, erect-spreading, each containing 15 to 20 
spikelets. 
Spikelets each with 1 perfect and 1 imperfect flower, 4 to 5 lines long, includ- 
ing the awns. 
Perfect flower: outer empty glumes lanceolate, acuminate, 1-nerved, very 
unequal, lower about one-half the length of the upper; flowering glume pubescent 
at the base, otherwise smooth, faintly 3-nerved, linear-oblong, 3 lines long, with 2 
narrow teeth at the apex and a middle one prolonged into an awn | line long; 
palet nearly as long, narrower, 2-nerved, finely 2-toothed at the apex. 
Imperfect flower consisting of 3 slender awns on a pedicel, with a narrow tuft 
of hair below the united awns; whole 4 to 5 lines long. 
PLATE XXXVII: 1, plant of matured size; 2, panicle of a smaller plant; a, 
empty glumes; 0, flowering glume, palet, stamens, pistil, and imperfect flower. 
This is the common black grama grass of southern New Mexico and Arizona, 
and is the most valuable grass of the mesas. 
