PANICUM MALACON 11. sp.
Whole plant often purplish, pubescent with white ascending hairs, those on the sheaths and culms longer, scantier on the upper sheaths and the upper part of the culms, the pubescence of the surfaces of the leaves dense and short. Culms caespitose, at first simple, erect, later branching at all the nodes and decumbent at the base ; nodes barbed with spreading hairs ; sheaths loosely em bracing the culm, shorter than the internodes in the simple state, in the branching condition much crowded ; ligule a fringe of hairs about mm. long ; leaves firm, rigid, sometimes sparingly ciliate, linear, acuminate at the apex, truncate or somewhat rounded at the base, 5-9-nerved, the midnerve prominent on both surfaces, the primary leaves 3—II cm. long, 3-7 mm. wide, ascending, or the upper ones erect, those on the branches strictly erect, 5 cm. long or less, 3-4 mm. wide; primary panicle but little exserted, 7-10 cm. long, 2-4 cm. wide, its branches ascending or erect, the ultimate divisions 3-10 times as long as the spikelets, appressed to the branches, capillary but rigid, the lower and longer branches 4-6 cm. long, usually more contracted than those on the upper
part of the panicle ; spikelets obovate, a little exceeding 3 mm. in length, the first scale more or less pubescent, about one-half as long as the spikelet and 3-5 nerved, acute, the second and third scales membranous, equal, 9-nerved, densely pubescent with ascending hairs, the latter scale enclosing a hyaline palet about one-half its length, the fourth scale chartaceous, oval, enclosing a palet of equal length and similar texture.
Collected by the writer in the " high pine land " at Eustis, Lake County, Florida, May 1-15, 1894, no. 628, and distributed as P. pauciforum Ell. It appears quite distinct from a specimen of that species, so named by Elliott, preserved in the herbarium of Columbia University, the character of the pubescence and the spikelets serving well to distinguish it.