PASPALUM VILLOSISSIMUM 11. Sp.
Whole plant, except the culm and spikelets, densely vilous, particularly the lower sheaths. Culms erect, smooth and glabrous, 5-10 dm. tall, from a thick and more or less branching rootstock, extending, when mature, much beyond the uppermost sheath, branching at the highest node, the usually single branch exserted but little beyond the sheath ; nodes purple; sheaths loosely em bracing the culm, those at the base short and overlapping, the remainder elongated, the uppermost sometimes without a leaf blade; ligule truncate, less than .5 mm. long; leaves erect, linear lanceolate to lanceolate, 3-20 cm. long, 3-10 mm. wide, truncate or slightly rounded at the base, long-acuminate toward the apex, a ring of long hairs at the very base immediately above the ligule; spike single, rarely with an additional one below, slender, usually strict, or the longer a little arcuate, 7—I1 cm. long, the rachis flat, about two-thirds as wide as the spikelets, wing-margined, some what flexuous, the margins serrulate ; spikelets orbicular-obovatc, .8—.9 mm. long, .75 mm. wide, by pairs, in four rows, on hispidu
lous pedicels about one-half their length ; first and second scales membranous, strongly pubescent with short spreading glandular tipped hairs, the former concave and 3-nerved, the latter flat with inrolled margins, 2-nerved ; third scale similar in shape to the first, greenish white, chartaceous or coriaceous, enclosing a palet of equal length and similar texture.
Type collected by the writer at Eustis, Lake County, Florida, early in June, 1894, no. 946, and distributed as P. setaceum, from which it seems clearly distinct, the shorter and broader leaves and the pubescent spikelets readily separating it from that species. It resembles P. dasj'phy//llm Ell. in its pubescence, but its slender long-exserted calms and the slender spikes, usually single, serve well to distinguish it. In P. dasyplzyllum the culm is much stouter, and the thicker spikes 2-4 in number, rarely 1.
Nos. 2019, collected at the same place, and 2416a at Tampa, both in 1895, belong here.