142 BRITISH GRASSES. 



Genus X. CHAMAGRQSTIS. 



Gen. Char. Spikes simple ; spikelet one-flowered ; outer 

 glumes equal, or nearly so, erect, oblong, abrupt, keeled, 

 awnless ; flowering glume a little shorter, very thin, white, 

 very hairy ; palea so small as to seem but a tuft of hairs, or 

 altogether absent ; ovary ovate, smooth ; filaments three, 

 hair-like, twice as long as the flowering glume; stigmas 

 long, slender, downy ; seed elliptical, enfolded in the glumes 

 but not united to them. 



Ckamagrostis minima, Borkh. Dwarf Chama- 

 grostis. 



(Knappia agrostidea, Eng. Bot.) 



Root annual, consisting of a few long simple fibres ; 

 stems simple, slender, erect, smooth, bearing only one or 

 two leaves near the base ; leaves short, linear, channelled, 

 blunt, springing chiefly from the root; sheaths smooth, 

 compressed, membranous, uppermost one longer than its 

 leaf ; ligule obtuse, notched, clasping the stem ; inflores- 

 cence racemed ; spikelets minute, one-flowered, ranged on 

 alternate sides of the rachis, on very minute footstalks; 

 outer glumes equal, smooth, blunt, green on the back and 

 tinted with violet at the sides ; flowering glume shorter, 

 obtuse, jagged at the top and covered with long hairs ; 

 palea very small and hairy, or absent altogether; ovary de- 

 licately marked with minute short stripes ; styles two, sepa- 

 rate ; anthers three, broader near the filament than at the 

 apex, notched at each end. 



Mr. Bentham, whose arrangement we follow, has 

 called this grass by the name given to it by Schrader, 

 and rejected by the author of ' English Botany/ on the 

 authority of Linnaeus, whose dictum he quotes : — ft A 

 generic name with one or two syllables prefixed, so as 





