ME, G. BENTHAM Olf GEAMINIiiE. 99 



single perfect flower. Nees added a second species from South 

 Africa which I have not seen ; but from his description it can 

 scarcely be a congener. Kunth has figured three lodicules in 

 the Australian plant ; I have always found only two long lanceo- 

 late ones. 



16. Danthonia, DC, is now a polymorphous, almost cosmo- 

 politan, genus of nearly a hundred species, of which the greater 

 number, however, are South-African, all characterized by the 

 spikelets containing three or more perfect flowers, and by the 

 awn of the flowering glumes more or less twisted or bent and 

 usually flattened at the base, but terminal between two or four 

 teeth or straight awns. Notwithstauding considerable diversities 

 in habit, inflorescence, and in the size and teeth of the glumes, 

 no good natural sections have yet been proposed. Nees's Si- 

 mantochate {Streblochcete, Hochst.), with the lateral lobes or teeth 

 of the flowering glumes entire and acute or awned, and Penta- 

 schiste, with the lateral teeth bifid and one or both teeth awned, 

 are purely artificial, and relate to the African species, all the non- 

 African ones being Included in SimantocJuste. DeCandolle ori- 

 ginally proposed the genus for two European species, D. procum- 

 lens and D.provincialis ; Brown showed, however, that they could 

 not well be regarded as cougeuers, and removed the former to 

 his new genus Triodia. The D. provincialis therefore becomes 

 the type of the present large genus Danthonui, though it may be 

 somewhat anomalous when compared with the majority of the 

 African and Australian ones. DeCandolle's chief character con- 

 necting his original species was the great length of the outer 

 empty 'glumes compared with the rest of the spikelefc ; and this is 

 a general, though not quite a universal, feature of the enlarged 

 genus. Since Brown's time the following genera have been pro- 

 posed, chiefly upon single species, with characters which appear 

 to be of little more than specific value : — Pentameris, Beauv., is 

 Z>. Thouarsii, Nees, from South Africa, with nearly the habit and 

 inflorescence of Z). pallescens, Nees, but remarkable for the short 

 thick grain truncate at the top. Trircvphis, Nees (not of E. Br.), 

 is B. radicmis, Steud., from South Africa, nearly allied to Z). crispa, 

 Nees. GTicBtolromus, Nees, contains a few South- African species, 

 in which one, or sometimes two, of the flowers' in the spikelet are 

 imperfect. Monacather, Steud., is B. hipartita, P. MuelL, an 

 Australian, species, with the fruiting glumes hardened and oblique 

 at the base and bearing a ring of hairs under the lobes. Plin- 



