No. 46. 

 ERAGROSTIS CURTIPEDICELLATA Buckley. 



Plant perennial, tufted with numerous abortive culms at bulbous base. 



Roots coarse, with dense, tawny root hairs. 



Culms stout, erect, rarely branching, terete, nearly solid, smooth, 1 to 2 

 feet tall. 



Leaves of sterile culms rather numerous, with more or less involute blades 3 

 to 6 inches long; of stem 4 to 8; sheaths exceeding the internodes, open and rather 

 loose above, smooth or with few scattered hairs along the exposed margins; blade 

 involute toward the tapering point, 2 to %\ lines wide, 4 to 6 inches long, smooth, 

 rigid; ligule and throat, a row of fine hairs 2 to 2£ lines long; sheaths and lower 

 sides of leaf often glandular viscid. 



Inflorescence an oblong pyramidal erect panicle 8 to 12 inches long; spreading 

 branches 3 to 5 inches long, much subdivided, mostly alternate, with tufts of 

 white hairs in the axils, the solitary appressed spikelets borne mostly on strict, 

 hispid lateral branchlets. 



Spikelets, oblong-linear, less than 1 line wide, 2 to 3 lines long, often purplish, 

 on hispid pedicels less than half their own length, internodes of the slightly zigzag 

 rachilla -^ line long; first and second glumes ovate, acute, carinate, thin, herba- 

 ceous, 1-nerved, minutely hispid on keel above, i line long; floral glumes lanceo- 

 late, acute, prominently nerved, f line long; palet linear, curved so that its two 

 pubescent nerves appear outside of the flowering glume. 



Grain, amber color, narrowly cylindrical, £ line long. 



Plate XLVI ; a, spikelet ; b, empty glumes ; c, floral glume; d, palet. The 

 figure does not show the hairy ligule. 



This species is closely related to E. pectinacea, being less diffuse, with shorter 

 branches and larger spikelets. 



It seems to be pretty closely confined to Texas and northward to soxithern 

 Kansas. 



