34 ME. Q. BENTHAM ON GEAMINE^. 



1. Eeimabia, Fliigge.— This old-established and universally 

 acknowledged genus has generally been limited to two tropical 

 and subtropical American species, with a peculiar slender habit 

 and inflorescence, and characterized by having only one empty 

 glume below the flowering one, and by the constant reduction of 

 the number of stamens to two. It has since, however, been as- 

 certained that several species which cannot well be separated from 

 Faspalum have only a single lower empty glume ; and Doell has 

 distinguished Beimaria chiefly by the reduction of the stamens, 

 together with the form of the spikelets more acuminate and 

 more closely appressed to therhachis than in any Paspalum. He 

 has added, under the name of B. aberrans, a third species, which, 

 with a more vigorous habit, rather invalidates the natural di- 

 stinction from Faspalum, but has all the characters of Beimaria ; 

 and Munro recognizes a fourth species, allied to B. aberrans, but 

 with only two, or at most three, spikes to the panicle and a 

 much thicker rhachis, in the Florida plant distributed by Curtis 

 with the number 3566 as Paspalum vaginatmn, but probably not 

 the one entered under that name in Chapman's ' Mora of the 

 Southern United States.' It occurs also in Wright's Cuban 

 collection under n. 3854, and may be characterized as B. oli- 

 gostaohya, Munro, spicis in pedunculo 2 rarius 3 (nee 6-15), 

 rhachi dilatata spiculis sublatiore. The true Paspalum vagina- 

 tmn, Sw., is a synonym of P. disticJiwn, Linn. 



2. Paspalum, Linn., ranks among the large genera of tropical 

 Grarainese, and in respect of the greater number of species is a 

 natural one, readily distinguished from Panicimi by the inflo- 

 rescence and by the technical character of the deficiency of the 

 small lowest glume. It is now, however, ascertained that neither 

 character is quite constant. A few Panica of the section Bra- 

 cJiiaria have the inflorescence of Paspalum ; and the lowest glume 

 is frequently reduced to a small callus, or is entirely deficient in 

 the section Bigitaria ; and the consequence has been, that several 

 species have been referred by some botanists to the one genus 

 and by others to the other. These ambiguous species appear, 

 however, to be best placed in Panicmi ; and all true Paspala have 

 the spikelets sessile or nearly so, in two or four rows along the 

 lower or outer side of the rhachis of the spikes or simple branches 

 of the panicle, and they show no trace of the small lowest glume 

 of Panicum. Thus defined, the number of species may be esti- 

 mated at about 160, by far the greater proportion of them tro- 



