HITCHCOCK AND CHASE—NORTH AMERICAN PANICUM. 267 
All the specimens cited below were collected in the spring. Since localities, like 
Lake City, Eustis, and Miami, Florida, where this species was found in March and 
April, were visited in September without its being found, it would seem that the 
plants usually die to the ground in early summer and that the secondary branches 
appear only rarely. In Hitchcock 931 and 9584 a few sparingly branched dead culms 
are attached, being the only branching culms seen. 
Two collections, Hitchcock 809 and Nash 424, have blades pubescent on the upper 
surface, while Hitchcock 941 and 1092 
have some blades that are pubescent 
and some that are glabrous on the up- 
persurface. Hitchcock’snos. 1066 and 
1092 have glabrous spikelets. 
DISTRIBUTION. 
Moist places, especially sphagnum 
bogs, Florida to Mississippi. 
Froripa: Baldwin, Hitchcock 1004; 
Lake City, Bitting 19, Hitch- 
cock 1020; Apalachicola, Chap- Fig. 294.—Distribution of P. vernale. 
man; Eustis, Nash 273 in part, ue 
424, Hitchcock 795, 798, 809; Dunedin, Tracy 6699; Braidentown, Hitchcock 
9584, 959, 960; Johns Pass Tracy 7180; Tampa, Hitchcock 936, 941; Miami, 
Hitchcock 931, 942. 
AtaBAMA: Flomaton, Hitchcock 1041. 
MississrepPr: Biloxi, Hitchcock 1066; Mississippi City, Hitchcock 1092. 
© 159. Panicum curtifolium Nash. 
Panieum curtifolium Nash, Bull. Torrey Club 26: 569. 1899. ‘‘Collected by 8. M. 
Tracy at Ocean Springs, Mississippi, May 2, 1898, no. 4598.’’ The type, in Nash’s 
herbarium, consists of a tuft with two slender vernal culms about 30 cm. long, begin- 
ning to branch at the middie nodes. ‘The blades are glabrous above except at the 
base and glabrous or sparsely pubescent beneath. Ina duplicate type in the National 
Herbarium several blades have a few scattered hairs on the upper surface. 
Panicum earlei Nash, Bull. Torrey Club 26: 571.1899. ‘‘Type collected at Auburn, 
Lee Co., Alabama, on May 7, 1898, by Messrs. F. 8. Earle and C. F. Baker, no. 1532.’’ 
The type, in Nash’s herbarium, consists of a tuft of early vernal culms’8 to 15 em. 
high, with immature panicles. The blades are sparsely pilose on the upper surface. 
Panicum austro-montanum Ashe, Journ. Elisha Mitchell Soc. 16: 85.1900. ‘‘Along 
mountain streams of Northern Alabama and the adjacent parts of Tennessee. Type 
- material is preserved in my herbarium.”’ The type specimen could not be found 
in Ashe’s herbarium. In the National Herbarium is a specimen from Sand Moun- 
tain, Alabama, June, 1899, sent by the Biltmore Herbarium, which was compared 
by E. D. Merrill in 1900 and said by him to be identical with the type of P. austro- 
montanum. It is also the same as a specimen from western North Carolina sent by 
Ashe as representing P. austro-montanum, and furthermore agrees with the original 
description except that the spikelets are 1 mm. long, instead of 0.7 mm. long. The 
Biltmore specimen agrees with the types of P. curtifolium and P. earlet. 
DESCRIPTION. 
Vernal form in dense colonies, the culms not crowded in the clump; culms 10 to 
30 cm. high, slender, weak, angled, erect or spreading, glabrous or sometimes with a 
few scattered hairs, the nodes sparsely bearded; sheaths much shorter’ than the 
_ elongated internodes, striate-angled, sparsely spreading-pilose, ciliate, especially at 
