22 Mr. Woods on the Genera of European Grasses. 



6. Lappago. Spiculse on short spikes in a raceme. The uppermost tabescent. 

 Outer glume filmy ; inner coriaceous, prickly. No abortive floret. 



Paspalum is not a European genus, but it seems necessary to notice it on 

 account of its close affinity with Digitaria. " A Panico distinctum," says 

 Kunth, "nonnisi glum^ inferiore plerumque abortiente." Kunth ^uts Digi- 

 taria with Panicum. The term plerumque must in such a case be interpreted 

 as admitting an accidental defect, not as a specific mark ; that in all species it 

 usually/ exists, but is in some occasionally wanting ; for if this be the only 

 distinction, it is evident that a species uniformly possessing the inferior glume 

 must be a Panicum and not a Paspalum. In the same way I should explain 

 the "glumae rarissime 2" in the generic character of Paspalum. On reverting, 

 however, to the species, we find that the glumes of this genus are always men- 

 tioned in the plural. It would certainly be clearer, where there is only one 

 glume in a spicula, to mention it in the singular ; but supposing this to be 

 merely a looseness of expression, we can yet, I think, hardly understand 

 " glumis flosculo longioribus" to apply to a single glume ; and in the descrip- 

 tions of no less than 48 species of Paspalum, two glumes are explicitly men- 

 tioned, or at least an inferior glume is mentioned, and the superior, as we 

 know, is always present. The lower is not even always a very small glume, 

 since we find in Paspalum distant and P. incequivalve " gluma inferiore flos- 

 culo dimidio breviore," and in Paspalum fusees cens, " glumis sequilongis palea 

 inferiore paulo brevioribus." Paspalum fuscum is described " glumis sub- 

 sequalibus ;" P. ligulare and P. brevifolium, " glumis sequalibus." Is it that 

 the author in these cases, after explaining the structure of the flower in the 

 generic description in his own words, has, in carelessly copying preceding 

 writers, called that a glume in the account of the species, which he had pre- 

 viously explained to be the palea of an inferior abortive floret ? This how- 

 ever is not all, for the lower glume of the spiked and digitate Panicums (Di- 

 gitarias) is described in different species as exigua, minuta, minutissima, bre- 

 vissima, minima, ohsoleta, and in Panicum tenuiflorum, ohsoletissima. In 

 Pan. propinquum the glume is univalvis, and in Pan. gibbosum and Pan.phceo- 

 trix the lower glume is nulla. 



Another apparent distinction is offered to us by Kunth in the generic cha- 



