490 
CLVII. GRAMINEiE (Stapf). 
[Chloachne. 
up to 1 lin. long. Spikelets 3J-3J lin. long. Glumes pale green 
with darker green tips, scaberulous-pruinose, the lower 2-2 J lin., 
the upper up to 3 lin. long. Lower floret 3J-3J lin. long. Upper 
floret 2 lin. long. Anthers 1J lin. long. Stigmas yellowish, 1J lin. 
long. 
Upper Guinea. Cameroons : Cameroon Peak, 4000 ft., Mann, 1354 ! 2101 ! 
Inflorescences (some with the uppermost leaf attached) collected by Whyte 
in Nyasaland on the Masuku Plateau between 6000 and 7000 ft. may represent 
another species. The panicles are less distinctly secund, the racemes rather 
lax, the lower of them up to 24 in. long, whilst the upper are very rapidly 
decreasing in length, and the herbaceous spikelets gape more during flowering. 
There is also frequently a male flower with the lower floret. Finally the hairs 
along the midrib of the leaf-blades are fewer and almost setose. 
58. MICROCALAMUS, Branch. in Journ. de Bot. hi. 282 ; not of 
Gamble. 
Spikelets ovoid to lanceolate-ovoid or oblong, laterally moderately 
compressed or almost terete about the middle, falling entire from the 
pedicels, 3-2-nate or subsolitary (owing to the arrest of spikelets) 
on the slender triquetrous rhachises of loose simple or compound 
racemes, or in scanty panicles ; lower floret barren or $ with a 
well- developed valvule and a pair of lodicules ; upper floret longer 
than the lower, Glumes, more or less ovate, more or less charta- 
ceous, 5-7-nerved, much shorter than the spikelet. Lower floret : 
valve similar to the glumes but much longer and relatively narrower, 
acuminate; 7-nerved ; valvule 2-keeled, slightly shorter than the 
valve. Upper floret : valve subcoriaceous, rostrate- or subulate- 
acuminate, 5-nerved, the beak slightly herbaceous ; valvule 2-keeled 
below, rather delicate upwards, slightly shorter than the valve. 
Lodicules 2, truncate-obovate. Stamens 3. Ovary oblong, glabrous ; 
styles free, long ; stigmas plumose, exserted subapically. Grain 
ovoid-ellipsoid, terete about the middle; scutellum oblong, rela- 
tively small ; hilum punctiform, basal. — Perennial with extra- 
vaginal innovations ; culms sheathed at the base with more or 
less membranous often long cataphylls, erect, few-noded, frequently 
with their first or second internode very much elongated and rest- 
ing on the ground, or obliquely ascending, then geniculate and 
suddenly erected ; perfect leaves mostly few ; their blades broad- 
lanceolate, rather tough, contracted at the base into a pulvinus and 
articulated below it with the sheath, many-nerved with transverse 
veins ; racemes often very much reduced and gathered into scanty 
and narrow panicles, or solitary, or the other extreme, much elon- 
gated with distant spikelets on a long common axis ; spikelets pale, 
often more or less oblique. 
Species 5, in tropical West Africa. 
A peculiar genus, not unlike Puelia, but of typically panicoid structure. The 
species admitted here differ almost exclusively in vegetative characters. Ho\v 
