258 BULLETIN 772, U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 
joint and pedicel falling attached to the sessile spikelet; glumes 
coriaceous, equal, usually copiously clothed, at least at the base, with 
long silky spreading hairs; sterile lemma thin and hyaline; fertile 
lemma hyaline, the midnerve extending into a slender awn; palea 
small and hyaline. 
Perennial reedlike grasses, with flat blades and terminal oblong, 
usually dense silky panicles. Species about 20, in the warmer regions 
of both hemispheres ; five in the United States, mostly in the Atlantic 
Coastal Plain. 
Type species : Erianthus saccliaroides Michx. 
Erianthus Michx., Fl. Bor. Amer. 1 : 54. 1803. Michaux describes two species, 
B. saccliaroides and E. brevibarbis. He derives the name of the genus from 
two Greek words which mean hairy flower, because of the very densely villous 
involucre below the spikelets, and he remarks that the genus is closely allied 
to Saccharum. The first species, with long involucral hairs, he names 
saccliaroides, and the second, with short hairs, brevibarbis. The first species, 
better representing Michaux's idea of the genus, is chosen as the type. 
The commonest native species is Erianthus saccharoides (fig. 157) , 
with straight awns and woolly panicles. Erianthus dwaricatus (L.) 
Hitchc, with pale panicles, and E. contortus Baldw., with dark 
panicles, have flat, twisted awns. Erianthus strictus Baldw. has 
naked spikelets, and E. brevibarbis Michx. has short hairs at the base 
of the spikelets. The plants are too coarse to be of value for grazing, 
but some of our native species might well be cultivated for ornament. 
One species, E. ravennae (L.) Beauv., a native of the Mediterranean 
region, is occasionally cultivated for ornament because of the silky 
plumes. It is called Ravenna grass and also by the less distinctive 
names, plume-grass and hardy pampas grass. The culms are several 
feet high, growing in large clumps, with blades about half an inch 
wide, tapering into a long slender point, the plume being as much as 
2 feet long. 
132. Andeopogon L. 
Spikelets in pairs at each node of an articulate rachis, one sessile 
and perfect, the other pedicellate and either staminate, neuter, or re- 
duced to the pedicel, the rachis and the pedicels of the sterile spikelets 
often villous, sometimes conspicuously so : glumes of the fertile spike- 
let coriaceous, narrow, awnless, the first rounded, flat, or concave on 
the back, several-nerved, the median nerve weak or wanting ; sterile 
lemma shorter than the glumes, empty, hyaline; fertile lemma 
hyaline, narrow, entire or bifid, usually bearing a bent and twisted 
awn from the apex or from between the lobes; palea hyaline, small 
or wanting; pedicellate spikelet awnless, sometimes staminate and 
about as large as the sessile spikelet, sometimes consisting of one or 
more reduced glumes, sometimes wanting, only the pedicel present. 
Rather coarse perennials (in the United States), with solid culms, 
the spikelets arranged in racemes, these numerous, aggregate on an 
