HITCHCOCK AND CHASE — NORTH AMERICAN GRASSES. 



37 



as a synonym. In the National Herbarium is a specimen of B. erucaeformis 

 bearing in Dr. Vasey's hand the note " Closely related to P. erucaeforme. 

 Panicum new species. Cultivated by G. Vasey from Mexican seed, 



of Dr. Ed. Palmer, 18S7." The species is not known from Mexico. It is 

 probable that the plants came up as weeds where seed of some Mexican grass 

 was sown and, samples of such seed not having been preserved, the fact that 

 this was not the species planted was not detected. 



Itoemer and Schultes, 1 doubtless by a typographical error, give the name 

 as "cruciforme" instead of "erucaeforme" (like Eruca), an error which is 

 copied in many later works. 



DESCRIPTION. 



Plants annual, stoloniferous, extensively creeping, the slender ascending 

 flowering shoots 20 to 50 cm. tall, branching ; culms glabrous, commonly grooved 

 when dry, the nodes densely pubescent; sheaths and 

 both surfaces of the blades usually sparsely tubercu- 

 late-hirsute (or the blades glabrate), densely puberu- 

 lent at the junction of sheath and blade ; ligule a ring 

 of hairs about 1 mm. long; blades flat, 1.5 to 10 cm. 

 (mostly 2 to 6 cm.) long, 2 to 6 mm. wide, rounded 

 at the base ; panicle long-exserted, 2 to 10 cm. long, the 

 5 to 12 racemes erect- falcate, imbricate, or the lower 

 distant their own length, the common axis and the 

 rachises very slender, angled, the axis scabrous or 

 sparsely pilose, the rachises and minute pedicels pilose ; 

 spikelets loosely imbricate, ovate-oblong, about 2.5 mm. 

 long ; first glume minute, truncate or notched, glabrous ; 

 second glume and sterile lemma about equal, 5-nerved, 

 papillose-pilose, rather obtuse, but the summits com- 

 monly folding in, forming a point beyond the fruit ; 

 fertile lemma and palea about 1.8 mm. long and 0.9 

 mm. wide, pale, smooth, and shining, the 3 nerves of 

 the lemma faintly visible. 



In dry ground the plants form small tufts of suberect culms, a habit rarely 

 seen in Old World specimens. 



DISTRIBUTION. 



Along ditches and in cultivated ground, mostly in arid regions, from Central 

 India west to Spain, and in eastern and southern Africa ; in the United States 

 known only from specimens cultivated in the grass garden of the Department 

 of Agriculture at Washington, D. C, and at Arlington, Virginia, and persisting 

 for a short time as weeds, and from specimens grown at Pullman, Washington, 

 and Biloxi, Mississippi. Sparingly introduced in Barbados, West Indies, and 

 in the island of Guam. 



2. Srachiaria ophryodes Chase, sp. nov. 



Plants perennial, grayish green, 15 to 25 cm. tall ; culms at first more or less 

 erect, becoming decumbent, freely branching and rooting at the lower nodes, 

 compressed, villous, or becoming glabrate above ; sheaths mostly longer than the 

 internodes, somewhat keeled, villous; ligule membranaceous, ciliate, 0.5 mm. 

 long; blades flat, rather thick, 5 to 20 cm. long, 3 to 6 mm. wide, nearly linear 



Pig. 1. — Bracliiarm eru- 

 caeformis. From a 

 cultivated specimen, 

 U. S. Nat. Herb. 

 928637. 



1 Syst. Veg. 2 : 426. 1817. 



