POLYGONACEOUS GENEBA. 37 



A rank weedy species of low prairies in Indiana, Illinois, 

 Iowa and Missouri, probably also in Michigan, Wisconsin and 

 Minnesota ; notably leafy and small-flowered as compared with 

 its eastern homologue, and by these notes, and especially by the 

 very dissimilar pubescence of the veins beneath, easily distin- 

 guished. 



P. SPBCTABiLis. Size of the foregoing ; leaves more elliptic- 

 lanceolate, of--firmer texture, glabrous on both faces except the 

 veins and veinlets, these both above and beneath beset with minute 

 slender conic and appressed short hairs, the margins appressed 

 ciliate with longer hairs : spikes usually two, large and showy, 

 the terminal one 2 to 4J inches long, the other half as long ; 

 short peduncles minutely glandular-hispid, but the whole stem 

 quite glabrous; bracts merely hispidulous and sparsely so: 

 achenes round-ovate, bluntly short-apiculate, dark -brown and 

 shining. 



Handsome species, known to me only as in U. S. Herb., in 

 specimens by M. S. Bebb from Pountaindale, 111., and from 

 Kiley County, Kansas, by G. L. Clothier. 



P. LONCHOPHYiLA. Leafy stem upright, or perhaps only 

 assurgent from a decumbent or prostrate base rooting at the 

 nodes : leaves narrowly lanceolate, 4 or 5 inches long, ascending 

 on petioles of less than an inch, those from the lower nodes 

 merely scabrous above, the upper and floral strigulose above, the 

 surface beneath similarly pubescent, but the midvein more 

 densely so, and with longer and more bristly but closely-ap- 

 pressed hairs ; spikes about 3 inches long, linear, their pedun- 

 cles neither glandular nor scabrous, but clothed with a short 

 soft appressed though not dense pubescence; bracts ovate, 

 acute, strigose on the back with short hairs, and ciliate with 

 longer and stouter ones. 



Near the southern shore of Lake Michigan, at Miller, Ind., 

 7 July, 1897, collected and distributed for f. Hartwrightii, by 

 L. M. Umbach ; but the plant bears no particularly close rela- 

 tionship to that species. 



P. GRANDiFOLiA. Terrestrial state 2 or 3 feet high, slender, 

 very leafy to the summit, the nodes abruptly swollen, the inter- 



