Schizachyrium multinervosum Nash

Schizachyrium multinervosum Nash, sp. nov
A tufted perennial with low slender stems, short terete leaf-blades, and slightly hairy spike-like racemes. Leaf-sheaths striate, smooth and glabrous, shorter than the internodes; ligtde a narrow scarious ring; blades 3-7 cm. long, involute, up to 1.5 mm. wide when spread ■out, the lower surface glabrous, with a broad median band of white tissue ; spike-like racemes 4—6 cm. long, straight, the internodes clavate and with a broad toothed hyaline margin at the apex, glabrous, the pedicels as long as the internodes or a little shorter, with a few long erect hairs on the outer margin near the apex, otherwise glabrous; sessile spikelet 4-4.5 mm. long and about 1.75 mm. wide, elliptic, the first scale 11-13-nerved, all but the keel-nerves vanishing at the hyaline and slightly 2-toothed apex, hispidulous on the keels above the middle, the second scale 1 -nerved, keeled, acute, about as long as the first scale, the third scale hyaline, oblong, about three fourths as long as the spikelet, long-ciliate above the middle, the fourth scale 2-cleft to the middle, the teeth ciliate, the awn perfect, about 1.5 cm. long, the much-exserted brown tightly spiral column about as long as the light-colored hispidulous subula which is somewhat flexuous below; pedicellate spikelet about 3 mm. long, usually of 2 scales, the first one about 7-nerved.
Type collected in eruptive rock soil, Madruga, Cuba, March 25, 1903, Briiton & Shafer 608 <herb. N. Y. Bot. Gard.).
Distribution : Central Cuba.