378 CONTRIBUTIONS FROM THE NATIONAL HERBARIUM. 



80. SAUGETIA gen. nov. 



Spikelets 2-flowered, the first perfect, the second neuter and much reduced; 

 glumes thin, unequal, 1-nerved, acuminate, shorter than the floret; first floret 

 stipitate, the lemma firm, minutely 2-toothed at the apex, 3-nerved, the mid- 

 nerve produced into a delicate awn; palea slightly shorter than the lemma, 

 acute, sulcate between the nerves ; second floret reduced to a minute glume on 

 an elongate slender rachilla joint. Cespitose perennial with slender wiry 

 branching culms, filiform blades, and solitary delicate f evv-fluweied spikes, the 

 spikelets subsessile, contiguous but scarcely imbricate along one side of a slender 

 continuous rachis, closely appressed to it. 



Type and only known species, Saugetia fasciculata. 



Saugetia we judge to be most nearly related to Gymnopogon and the South 

 American Monochaete, from both of which it differs in having . a solitary 

 terminal spike. It differs further from Gymnopogon in having but a single 

 rudimentary floret and from Monochaete in the stipitate fertile floret and in 

 the presence of a sterile floret. 



It gives us great pleasure to name this striking genus for Brother Leon, 

 Joseph Sylvestre Sauget, who has contributed greatly to our knowledge of the 

 grasses of Cuba. 



1. Saugetia fasciculata sp. nov. 



Plants perennial in dense hard tufts, glabrous throughout; culms slender, 

 hard and wiry, 40 to 50 cm. tall, erect or the summit leaning, the internodes 

 elongate, branching at most of the nodes, the branches mostly fascicled, com- 

 monly one of them elongate, the others reduced to leafy shoots of overlapping 

 sheaths and short spreading blades, these branchlets forming conspicuous 

 tufts along the main culms and branches ; sheaths 5 to 8 mm. long, with broad 

 papery margins, a tuft of delicate white hairs 1 mm. long at the summit, these 

 wanting on old sheaths, the sheaths of the branchlets reduced ; ligule obsolete ; 

 blades filiform, crescent-shaped in cross section, scarcely 0.5 mm. wide when 

 flattened out, flexuous, the primary blades as much as 10 cm. long, those of 

 the branchlets 1 to 3 cm. long ; spikes long-exserted, erect, 3 to 5 cm. long, the 

 rachis subfiliform, slightly concavo-convex, the spikelets fitting into the con- 

 cavities ; spikelets distant by about their own length to half their length, 3.6 

 to 3.8 mm. long excluding the awn ; glumes lanceolate-subulate, the first 0.7 

 to 0.8 mm. long, the second 2 to 2.5 mm. long ; floret stipitate, the stipe 0.5 mm. 

 long, bearded with erect hairs 0.4 to 0.5 mm. long; lemma 3.2 mm. long (ex- 

 cluding the awn), about 0.4 mm. wide, glabrous, the lateral nerves near the 

 margin, the midnerve becoming strong toward the summit and produced into a 

 delicate flexuous erect, minutely scabrous awn 12 to 16 mm. long; palea 

 minutely scabrous on the nerves; second floret reduced to a narrow pointed 

 1-nerved lemma about 1.2 mm. long, the slender glabrous erect rachilla joint 

 1.8 mm. long. 



Type in the U. S. National Herbarium, no. 950204, collected in a small wood, 

 Savana San Julian, south of Guane, Province of Pinar del Rio, Cuba, December 

 28, 1916, by Brother Leon (no. 6901). 



A fragmentary specimen of this peculiar grass was collected by Wright " in 

 small skirts of woods bordering the Savana San Julian" in 1865 (no. 3894) 

 and was listed in Sauvalle's Flora Cubana 1 without description as " Muhlen- 

 bergia spicata Munn," and by Hitchcock 2 as an unidentified specimen. The 



*Page 191. 2 Contr. U. S. Nat. Herb. 12: 246. 1909. 



