PASPALUM SIMPSONI n. sp.
Culms, upper sheaths, and surfaces of the leaves smooth and glabrous. Culms erect, slender, 2-8 dm. tall ; sheaths loosely em bracing the culm, the basal ones short and appressed-villuos, the remainder longer and usually much exceeded by the inter nodes of the mature culms, the uppermost one elongated ; ligule very short and truncate ; leaves erect or ascending, lanceolate, or linear-lanceolate, 2.5-14 cm. long, 2—io mm. wide, rounded or slightly cordate at the base, acuminate at the apex, ciliate, glau cescent above ; inflorescence 8-16 cm. long, the first internode of the main axis 3.5-5 cm. in length, the remainder gradually be coming shorter ; spikes usually strict, 3-5, spreading or ascending, 2.5-7.5 cm. long, pubescent and pilose at the base, the rachis flat, winged, one-half to two-thirds as broad as the spikelets, narrower and more or less flexuous toward the apex, minutely scabrous on the margins ; spikelets in 4 rows, in pairs on flattened minutely scabrous shorter pedicels, obicular-obovate, 1.5 mm. long, the two outer scales membranous, 3-nerved, the first one concave, pubes cent with short spreading glandular-tipped hairs, the second flat, glabrous, or sparingly pubescent at the very base, the third scale chartaceous, concave, smooth and shining, yellowish, enclosing a palet of equal length and similar texture.
Collected by J. H. Simpson on No Name Key, Florida, in May, 1891, no. 184. I take pleasure in naming this grass in honor of Mr. Simpson, whose extensive collections in southern peninsular Florida, have added much to the knowledge of the flora of that most interesting region. The Paspatitin in question has been con founded with P. caespitosum Fluegge, a discussion of which species occurs above under P. Blot/get/a, and Mr. Simpson's plant, referred to previously, was distributed under the former name. Curtiss' no. 5440, collected at the same locality on June 26, 1895, is this same plant and was also distributed as P. caespitostrin.
This grass is readily distinguished from P. Blodgritii, to which it is related, by its smaller and differently shaped spikelets, the pubescence of which is short, spreading and glandular-tipped, and by the broader and manifestly ciliate leaves. The spikelets in P. Blodgettii are elliptic or elliptic-obovate, about one-half longer, and the pubescence scantier and composed of much longer hairs, which are appressed and not glandular-tipped ; the leaves, more over, are sparingly, if at all, ciliate.