DANTHONIA GLABRA ri. sp.
Whole plant, with the few exceptions noted below, glabrous. Culms 4-7 dm. tall, erect, simple, striate, slightly rough just below the panicle, and puberulent for some distance below the brown nodes ; sheaths smooth, only those at the base of the culm exceed ing the internodes, the remainder much shorter than their inter nodes ; ligule densely ciliate with silky hairs 1-2 mm. long; leaves smooth excepting at the apex, 1.5-3 mm. wide, erect, those on the sterile shoots 1.5 dm. long or more, those on the culm 5-10 cm. long, the basal ones shorter than the rest ; panicle 5-8 cm. long, its axis, together with the erect or occasionally spreading branches, hispidulous ; spikelets, including awns, 1.7-2 cm. long, 5-8-flow ered, on hispidulous appressed pedicels, 2.5-7 mm. long ; empty scales acuminate, the first 3-nerved, I.3--I.7 cm. long, equalling or slightly shorter than the 5-nerved second ; flowering scales 5-6 mm. long to base of the teeth, pubescent on the lower half of the margins, and occasionally sparingly so on the mid-nerve near the base, with erect silky hairs about 2 mm. long, teeth including awns
1.5-3 mm. long, one of the awns usually shorter than the other, the central awn 9-12 mm. long, more or less spreading, yellowish brown at the base, strongly hispidulous toward the green apex, about once twisted ; palet about reaching to the base of the awn or nearly so, strongly ciliate on the two nerves.
Type specimens collected by Dr. John K. Small, on Little Stone Mountain, DeKalb County, Georgia, on July 5, 1895. In this the flowering scales are entirely glabrous on the back. In another form from New Jersey the flowering scales are sparingly pilose on the back near the base. This latter form was secured by Dr. John Torrey, at Quaker Bridge, in May, 1830; also by a party of the Torrey Botanical Club at Forked river, on May 30, 1896.
This is abundantly distinct from D. Nutt., to which it is allied. In that species the sheaths are densely villous, and the marginal hairs of the appressed-pubescent flowering scales are about 3 mm. long, instead of 2 mm. as in D. glalyn.