MB. G. BENfTHAM ON OEAMINEiE. 105 



lets vary in the same panicle, one, two, or three to the spike, 

 and are themselves polymorphous. Where there are three, I 

 have found the lowest empty glume of the lowest spikelet very 

 narrow and awnlike, and very probably that which Kunth has 

 described and figured as an awn at the base of the glume ; in 

 the uppermost of the three spikelets the lowest empty glume is 

 similar to the second, the intermediate spikelet being sometimes 

 like the upper, sometimes like the lower one. (4) Polyodon, 

 H. B. K. {TriplatJiera, Endl.). Spikes few, short, and crowded at 

 the. end of the peduncle with few spikelets, the flowering glume 

 three-awned, the two or three upper empty glumes each with 

 three or five awns, having together the appearance of a single 

 cluster of many awns. We have two species, B. distieha {Poly- 

 podon distichum, H. B. K.), including apparently AtTteropogon 

 affinis, l^ourn. (not JEutriana qffinis, Hook, f.), with the spikelets 

 including the awns under half an inch long, and B. muUiseta (JEu- 

 triav.a timltiseta, Nees), with the spikelets and their awns above 

 an inch and a half long, giving the plant the aspect oi Boissiera. 

 Corethrum, Vahl, is probably the same plant. He received his 

 specimen in a collection of Syrian plants sent him by Thouin, 

 into which it had probably got misplaced by some carelessness in 

 sorting. No special locality is ascribed to it nor any indication 

 of the collector; and no plant answering to Yahl's elaborate and 

 probably accurate description is known from Syria or any part of 

 the Levant. 



14. Melanocencheis, Nees, comprises three species from 

 East India or tropical Africa, closely resembling each other, and 

 at first sight having the aspect almost of JEgopogon but the 

 characters are very nearly those of Bouieloua {AtTieropogon) ; 

 the genus is readily distinguished from both by the linear plumose 

 empty glumes. 



The preceding genera have all only a single flower in the 

 spikelet, the second, when present, being male only ; in the follow- 

 ing ten genera there are at least two, and often several more 

 fertile flowers. 



15. Teipogon, Eoth {Plagiolytrum, Nees), contains about eight 

 East-Indian and tropical-African species, with the single elon- 

 gated terminal spike of Enteropogon, but with several-flowered 

 spikelets, and the flowering glumes more or less three-awned as 

 in Triehloris, TrirapMs, etc., the lateral awns sometimes reduced 

 almost to teeth. 



