178 



Spakiina alterniplora. Many-spiked Cord Grass. Plate CXLI. 



Partial spites many (four or more), erect, more or less appressed ; 

 their rachis angular, smooth, extended beyond the spikelets as a long 

 flexuose awn-liSe point. Outer and smaller glume glabrous ; inner and 

 larger one five-veined, glabrous except on the middle or keel-vein, 

 which is fringed with distant short bristles. Outer palea three -veined, 

 not hairy; inner one longer, thin, acute. Leaves continuous with 

 their sheaths ; the uppermost equal to, or longer than, the spikes. 



Spartina alterniflora, Loisel. E. B. Supp., 2812. Most modem 

 British botanists. S. glabra, Muhl. S. loevigata. Link. 



Found abundantly on the mud banks and flats of the Itchen and 

 Southampton rivers. A much larger and stronger growing grass than 

 Spartina striata. Root sending out long creeping under-ground 

 shoots or stolones. Stems a foot and a half to two or three feet high, 

 covered throughout with the investing leaf-sheaths. Leaves often a 

 foot or more in length, and in luxuriant specimens from half to three 

 quarters of an inch in breadth at the lower part, where they are never 

 contracted nor present any appearance of articulation, like those of the 

 preceding species. Inflorescence a more or less compact or spike-like 

 panicle, consisting of from four or five to ten or twelve erect secondary 

 or partial spikes, the upper ones springing like the pedicels of a raceme 

 one above another from the main rachis ; which latter, as well as the 

 partial ones, always extends considerably beyond the uppermost spike- 

 let as a terminal awn-like point. The spikelets, with their glumes and 

 the palese of the solitary flower, are not very dissimilar at the first 

 glance from those of S. striata ; but the glumes and paleae are not 

 hairy, indeed perfectly smooth, with the exception of a few distant 

 bristles on the keel-vein of the longer glume. In addition to this 

 difference it will be remarked, that the inner or upper glume is five- 

 veined and the outer palea three-veined, instead of being both only 

 single-veined as they are in the latter species. The comparatively 

 greater length of the uppermost leaf is a feature of doubtful importance, 

 being liable to considerable variation. 



Perennial. Flowers in August. 



When recently gathered, this grass has a peculiaj-ly foetid odour 

 much resembling that of phosphurated hydrogen gas. Dr. Arnold 

 Bromfield, who furnished the description and the specimen figured in 

 the English Botany Supplement, informs us that " in spite of its rank 

 smell, it is greedily devoured by pigs and horses, and is extensively 

 used both as litter for cattle and for thatching by the poorer classes 

 about Southampton." 



There are so many features of general resemblance between this 

 grass and the preceding, and those of obvious distinction are of a class 

 so liable to variation under difference of locality and other circum- 



