102 MB. G, BENTHAM ON GEAMINE^. 



7. Chloeis, Sw., contains about forty species, dispersed over 

 the warmer regions both of the New and the Old "World. It is 

 for the most part a natural genus, with two or more spikes digitate 

 at the end of the peduncle, the one-flowered spike-lets in two 

 regular close rows as in the allied genera, the flowering glume 

 usually awned, and one, two, or more empty glumes above it ; but 

 these characters are not constant, and the structure of the spike- 

 lets is somewhat polymorphous. C monostaohya, Pourr., from the 

 Mascarene islands, and G. unispieea, E. Muell., from Australia, 

 are slender plants with only one or rarely two spikes, and the 

 flowering glume as well as the upper empty one are narrow and 

 awned. In C aciculare, Br., and G. BoxburgJiiana, Edgew., from 

 East India and Australia, and C radiata, Sw., from America 

 and Africa, the glumes are likewise narrow and awned, or the 

 upper empty one reduced to a mere awn, but the spikes are nor- 

 mally several and digitate. O.foliosa, Willd., has also a narrow 

 awned flowering glume ; but the upper empty one is a double awn 

 (or two awnlike glumes), and the spikes are not so closely clus- 

 tered at the end of the peduncle, on which account Doell has 

 transferred the species to Oymnopogon, from which it appears to 

 me to be much further removed. In O. pumilio, Br., G.pecUnata, 

 Benth., and C divaricata, Br., all from Australia, the flowering 

 glume is distinctly two-lobed with the awn between the lobes. 

 In a considerable number of species the upper empty glumes are 

 broad and truncate at the top — these empty glumes being several 

 in each spikelet in the Asiatic and Australian species, but one 

 only in the American ones. In all the preceding species the 

 flowering and upper glumes are awned ; in five or six American 

 or African species forming the proposed genus lEtistachys, Desv. 

 {Schultesia, Spreng.), botli the flowering and the upper empty 

 glume are obtuse and truncate, but without any awn, or only a 

 minute point. They are, however, closely connected with the 

 typical species of Chloris through C submutica, Eunth. G. villosa, 

 Pars., and G. macrantlta, Jaub. et Spach, both of them described 

 in detail and figured by Jaubert and Spach, must be transferred to 

 Tetrapogon, as having their spikelets with at least two fertile flowers. 



8. Teichlorts, Eourn., comprises two Mexican and two extra- 

 tropical South- American species. They resemble Trisetaria in 

 their dense oblong crinite panicle and their three-awned flowering 

 glumes ; but the panicle is composed of simple crowded or verti- 

 cillate spikes, and the spikelets, sessile in two rows on the rhachis 



