46 THE AGRICULTURAL GRASSES OF THE UNITED STATES. 



EucHLCENA LUXURIANS. (Teosiiite, Guatemala grass.) 



This grass is a native of Mexico and Central America, but has been 

 introdnced into cultivation in various parts of the world, and recently 

 in the Southern States. It is closely related to Indian corn {zea mays). 

 It has the male flowers in a tassel at the top of the stalk. The fertile 

 flowers are from the lateral joints, not like maize, on a thickened axis, 

 but on a very slender stem, and inclosed in a loose external husk. 



Prof. Asa Gray writes in the American Agriculturist for August, 

 1880, respecting this plant, as follows : 



The director of the botanic garden and. government plantations at Adelaide, South 

 Australia, reports favorably of this strong-growing corn-like forage plant, that the 

 prevailing dryness did not injure the plants, which preserved their healthy green, 

 while the blades of other grasses sutfered materially. The habit of throwing out 

 young shoots is remarkablej sixty or eighty rising to a height of 5 or 6 feet. Further 

 north, at Palmerston (nearer the equator), in the course of five or six months the 

 plant reached the height of 12 to 14 feet, and the stems on one plant numbered fifty- 

 six. The plants, after mowing down, grew again several feet in a few days. The 

 cattle delight in it in a fresh state, also when dry. Undoubtedly there is not a more 

 prolific forage plant known ; but as it is essentially tropical in its habits, this luxu- 

 riant growth is found in tropical or subtropical climates. The chief drawback to its 

 culture with us will be that the ripening of the seed crop will be problematical, as 

 early frosts will kill the plant. To make the Teosinte a most useful plant in Texas 

 and along our whole southwestern border, the one thing needful is to develop early- 

 flowering varieties, so as to get seed before frost. And this could be done without 

 doubt if some one in Texas o^ Florida would set about it. What it has taken ages 

 to do in the case of Indian corn, in an unconscious way, might be mainly done in a 

 human life-time by rightly-directed care and vigorous selection. 



Zea mays. (Indian corn.) 



This plant is too well known to need more than a botanical descrip- 

 tion. The staminate or male flowers are produced at the apex of the 

 stalk in a large, branched panicle, a foot or more in length. The 

 branches of the panicle are rather slender, 8 to 10 inches long, with arfew 

 shorter subbranches near the base. They are flower-bearing through their 

 entire length. The flowers are in small clusters of two to four spikelets 

 at eachjoint of the flattened axis, on very short, slender pedicels, or some 

 of them almost sessile, the different clusters somewhat overlapping each 

 other. The si>ikelets are each four to five lines long and two-flowered. 

 The outer glumes are membranaceous, lanceolate, and acute or acumi- 

 nate, sparsely hairy, five to nine nerved, and delicately purple striped. 

 The flowering glumes and palets are nearly PS long as the outer glumes, 

 lance oblong, alike in texture, very thin membranaceous, the glume 

 three-nerved, the palet two-nerved, both delicately fringed on the mar- 

 gins near the apex with soft white hairs. Stamens, three in each 

 flower. 



The female or pistillate flowers are produced from lateral joints of 

 the stem on a hard, thickened, cj'lindrical spike or axis, called the cob, 

 in longitudinal rows (usually eight to sixteen). The spikelets are closely 

 sessile and packed in the rows. The structure- of the spikelets is some- 



