BOTANICAL SOCIETY OF CANADA. 
55 
NOTE ON THE GENUS GRAPHEPHORUM, DESV., AND ITS SYNONYMY. 
By Asa Gray, M. D., 
Honorary Member of the Botanical Society of Canada. 
About six years ago, I received from Dr. Cooley, of Washington, Macomb Co., 
Michigan, a panicle, with a portion of the stem and leaves, of a grass which was 
entirely new to me. A memorandum stated that it was gathered on the borders of 
a swamp near the collector's residence. Having retained no specimen himself, and 
no particular recollection of this grass, Dr. Cooley has not been able to find it again. 
In preparing the second edition of my Manual of the Botany of the Northern 
United States, (published in the year 1856), I was obliged to characterize this grass 
from the imperfect single specimen in my possession, which I did under the name 
of Dupontia Cooleyi^ referring the plant, with some misgiving, to R. Brown's Arctic 
genus Dupontia. There is nothing Arctic in the appearance of this grass, which, 
from the specimen, seemed to have much the appearance and the size of Cinna arun- 
dinacea ; and the habitat, south of lat. 43 o ^ and not far from the Lake and River 
St. Clair, is by no means boreal. 
The very close affinity between Dupontia and Arctophila, Rupr. having been 
indicated by Ruprecht* and by Grisebachf , it was natural to regard our grass as 
intermediate between the two ; and I further suggested the propriety of combining 
them along with the Scolochloa of Link or Fluminia of Fries (which Grisebach had 
adopted as a genus) under Dupontia, as the oldest name. 
The main object of this communication is to state, that I have recently had the 
pleasure to receive from Dr. Charles Pickering, specimens plainly conspecific with 
the Michigan grass (although much smaller and more slender), which this excellent 
naturalist detected last August at the Falls of the Riviere du Loup, in Lower Ca- 
nada, about 100 miles below Quebec. 
Dr. Pickering not only identified his plant with my Dupontia Cooleyi, but, 
which is more important, suggested that it might be the obscure Aira melicoides 
of Michaux, a grass known only from the specimen preserved in the Michauxian 
herbarium, upon which specimen, Desvaux and Beauvois had characterized the 
genus Graphephorum. The genus was founded under this name by Desvaux, but 
* Plores Samojedorum Cisuralensium, ( in Beitr. Pflanzenk, Russ. Reiches), p. 62-65. 
t In Ledebour, Flora Rossica, 4, p. 386. 
