42 



CONTRIBUTIONS FROM THE NATIONAL. HERBARIUM. 



who was stationed at Rio Janeiro and who sent botanical collections to Paris 

 and Munich. The specimen was not found in the Trinius Herbarium, but the 

 plate identifies the species. 



Panicum distans Salzm. ; Doell In Mart. Fl. Bras. 2": 186. 1877. A herbarium 

 name given as a synonym of Panicum plantagineum. 



Brachiaria plantaginea Hitchc. Contr. U. S. Nat. Herb. 12: 212. 1909. Based 

 on Panicum plantagineum Link. 



DESCRIPTION. 



Plants resembling B. platyphylla, more widely creeping and commonly taller, 

 the sheaths ciliate on the margin, otherwise glabrous or nearly so, the blades 

 with a few hairs on the margins at the narrowed or slightly rounded base, 

 rather lax, mostly 8 to 12 mm. wide, 5 to 20 cm. long, or rarely longer ; panicle 

 short-exserted or included at the base, the common axis more slender than in 

 B. platyphylla, mostly folded ; racemes 3 to 6, or on the branches 1 or 2, 3 to 10 

 cm. long, rarely longer, ascending or spreading, sometimes iiexuous; rachis 1 to 



Fig. G. — Brachiaria plantaginea. From Pringle 3904. 



1.5 mm. wide, usually appearing more slender because of the infolded margins; 

 spikelets glabrous, 4 to 4.7 mm. long, about 2 mm. wide, elliptic, less turgid than 

 in B. platyphylla, depressed down the middle of the sterile lemma, this and the 

 second glume not forming a flattened beak beyond the fruit ; fruit plano-convex, 

 3 to 3.5 mm. long, minutely papillose-roughened, the rachilla joints between the 

 glumes and lemmas slightly developed, placing the fruit nearer to the summit 

 of the spikelet. 



A species of wider range and more variable than B. platyphylla. 



DISTRIBUTION. 



Open, mostly moist ground, at an altitude of 900 to 2,100 meters in the 

 uplands of Mexico, and south to Bolivia and southern Brazil. In 1879 it ap- 

 peared in ballast at Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (Burk), and Camden, New 

 Jersey ( Martindale ) . 



Dtjrango : Durango, Hitchcock 7576 ; Palmer in 1896. 



San Luis PotosI : Las Canoas, Hitchcock 5758 ; Pringle 3904. Cardenas, Hitch- 

 cock 5752. 



