2. S. polystàchya, Willd. (Salt Reed-Grass.) Culm tall and stout (4–9° high, often 1´ in diameter near the base); leaves broad (½–1´), roughish underneath, as well as the margins; spikes 20–50, forming a dense oblong raceme (purplish); glumes barely mucronate, the lower half the length of the flowering one, of which the rough-hispid midrib reaches to the apex.—Salt or brackish marshes, within tide-water, especially southward.

3. S. júncea, Willd. (Rush Salt-Grass.) Culms low (1–2° high) and slender; leaves narrow and rush-like, strongly involute, very smooth; spikes 1–5, on very short peduncles, the rhachis smooth; glumes acute, the lower scarcely half the length of the middle one, not half the length of the upper.—Salt marshes and sea-beaches. Aug. (Eu.)

[*][*] Spikelets loosely imbricated, or somewhat remote and alternate, the keels only slightly hairy or roughish under a lens; spikes sessile and erect, soft; leaves, rhachis, etc., very smooth; culm rather succulent.

4. S. strícta, Roth. (Salt Marsh-Grass.) (Pl. 9, fig. 1–3.) Culm 1–4° high, leafy to the top; leaves soon convolute, narrow; spikes few (2–4), the rhachis slightly projecting beyond the crowded or imbricated spikelets; glumes acute, very unequal, the larger 1-nerved, a little longer than the flower.—Salt marshes, Penn., etc.—Odor strong and rancid. (Eu.)

Var. glàbra, Gray. Culm and leaves longer; spikes 5–12 (2–3´ long); Spikelets imbricate-crowded.—Common on the coast.

Var. alterniflòra, Gray. Spikes more slender (3–5´ long), and the spikelets remotish, barely overlapping, the rhachis continued into a more conspicuous bract-like appendage; larger glume indistinctly 5-nerved; otherwise as in the preceding form, into which it passes.—Common with the last; also Onondaga Lake, J. A. Paine.

2. BECKMÁNNIA, Host. ([Pl. 16.])

Spikelets jointed upon the pedicels, 1–2-flowered (only one fertile), obovate and laterally compressed, imbricated in 2 rows upon one side of the angled rhachis of a spike. Glumes 3 or 4, the 2 lower strongly concave and carinate, obtuse or acutish, the 1 or 2 flowering glumes narrower, lanceolate, acute or acuminate and a little exserted, becoming rather rigid and with the thin palet enclosing the oblong grain.—A stout erect subaquatic perennial, with the short spikes erect and simply spicate or in a strict narrow panicle. (Named for John Beckmann, professor of botany at Goettingen.)

1. B. erucæfórmis, Host, var. uniflòra, Scribn. Glumes 3 and spikelets 1-flowered; spikes (6´´ long or less) panicled.—N. W. Iowa, W. Minn., and westward. The Old World form, which also is found in the far northwest, has 2-flowered spikelets.

3. PÁSPALUM, L. ([Pl. 13.])