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HITCHCOCK — GRASSES OF CUBA. 243 



Palea not prominently ciliate. 



Annual; blades flat; panicle open but not very diffuse . .9. E. tephrosanthes . 

 Perennial. 



Plants low, 10 to 20 cm. high; blades involute, pan- 

 icle not diffuse. 



Spikelets 3 to 5-flowered; pedicels glutinous; 



palea somewhat ciliate 6. E. glutinosa. 



Spikelets many -flowered; pedicels not glutinous; 



palea only minutely ciliate 3. E. cubensis. 



Plants tall; blades flat; panicles very diffuse. 



Spikelets less than 2 mm. long, 1 or 2-flowered. .1. E. airoides. 

 Spikelets 5 to 10 mm. long, several-flowered. 

 Spikelets lanceolate; pedicels shorter than 

 spikelets; panicle branches lax; culms 1 



meter or more tall 5. E. excelsa. 



Spikelets linear ; pedicels mostly longer than 

 spikelets; panicle branches stiffly spread- 

 ing; culms rarely over 60 cm. tall 4. E. elliottii. 



1. Eragrostis, airoides Nees, Agrost. Bras. 509. 1829. — S^^^^'^' inc»'*»-tJ^x!i2Xjhi-*-_ 

 In savannas, Chirigote, November 2, Wright 3827. ' ' U,^. ,gj^ 



2. Eragrostis ciliaris (L.) Link, Hort. Berol. 1: 192. 1827. 

 Poa ciliaris L. Syst. Nat. ed. 10. 2: 875. 1759. 



Wright 155; Wright 1550; Cojimar, Hitchcock in 1906; Batabano, Baker HC 3912; 

 Guines, Baker HC 3561; Robles, Shafer 40; Guanabacoa, Leon 196; Puentes Grandes, 

 Leon 281; Herradura, Baker HC 2778; Matanzas, Palmer & Riley 13; El Guama, 

 Palmer & Riley 185; Santiago de Cuba, Millspaugh 1062; Cienfuegos, Combs 480 in 

 Gray Herbarium. In the herbarium of the New York Botanical Garden are the 

 following: Isle of Pines, Curtiss in 1904; Matanzas, Britton & Shafer 555; Santiago 

 de Cuba, Underwood & Earle 172. 



The Wright specimen in the National Herbarium bears the secondary number 

 305. In the Grisebach Herbarium are two Wright specimens of this, no. 305 of 

 1865 and no. 1550 from eastern Cuba, 1859. In the Gray Herbarium are two speci- 

 mens of Wright 1550, one of 1860-64, the other from Josephina, near Monte Verde, 

 1859. 



3. Eragrostis cubensis sp. nov. 



Culms cespitose from a perennial base, numerous, slender and wiry, smooth, erect or 

 spreading, 10 to 20 cm. long, or occasionally decumbent and as much as 30 cm. long; 

 sheaths smooth, striate; blades filiform-convolute, glabrous, or very sparsely pilose, 

 the base and mouth of sheath pilose, 2 to 3 cm. long, or those on the innovations 

 as much as 10 cm. long; panicles nearly simple, 2 to 4 cm. long, the branches 1 to 

 2 mm. long, bearing a single spikelet, or the lowermost as much as 1 cm. long, bear- 

 ing 2 to 4 spikelets; spikelets linear, 5 to 15 mm. long, 1 mm. wide, as much as 40- 

 flowered; glumes smooth, nearly equal, about 1 mm. long; lemma acute, 3-nerved, 

 glabrous, keel smooth; palea minutely ciliate. 



Isle of Pines, Curtiss 420 (type U. S. National Herbarium no. 522037); Wright 

 3424, 3825; Vedado, Baker HC 3456; Madruga, Shafer 68; La Magdalena, Baker PI. 

 Trop. Amer. 3; Herradura, Tracy 9097, Baker HC 2938, 4876, 4877, Hitchcock in 1906; 

 Sagua, Britton & Wilson 382 in Herb. N. Y. Bpt^Gard. '' ^c-lir-^^ 



This has been confused with E. bahiensis(^e\id., which is a larger plant, 60 cm. 

 or more tall. E. berteroiana (Schult.) Kunth, oTSanto Domingo, has smaller spikelets * 

 with lemmas scabrous on the keel, as shown by a specimen from Kunth in Trin- 

 ius's herbarium. The Grisebach specimen from Wright is numbered "938=3424," 

 and is from western Cuba, 1863, "bushy swamps, Hanabana, May 16." Another 





