Panicum plenum Hitchc. & Chase

Panicum plenum Hitchc. & Chase, Contr. U. S. Nat. Herb. 15: 80
1910.
Plants mostly in large clumps, 1-2 meters high, from a stout rpotstock, mostly glaucous ; culms robust, compressed, glabrous, usually ■ decumbent at base, sometimes branching at the lower nodes ; leaf-sheaths overlapping on the short lower internodes, shorter than the upper, glabrous, or the lower sometimes pubescent toward the summit, more or less keeled; ligule densely ciliate, about 2 mm. long; blades erect or ascending, or the lower spreading and soon deciduous,
M
flat, 20-35 cm. long, 7-17 mm. wide, glabrous on both surfaces or rarely sparsely pilose on either surface toward the base, the upper surface scarcely scabrous; panicles 20-50 cm. long, about two thirds as wide, the slender branches somewhat spreading, the general appearance much like that of P. bulbosum n but proportionately wider, the main axis nearly smooth; spikelets 3-3.4 mm. long, 1.2 mm. wide, oblong-elliptic, glabrous, rather strongly nerved; first glume scarcely half the length of the spikelet or less, subacute, 3-nerved ; second glume and sterile lemma subequal, scarcely exceeding the fruit, the palea of the sterile floret about as long as its lemma; fruit 2.9-3 mm. long, 1 mm. wide, elliptic, acute, only very obscurely rugose, minutely puberulent at the apex.
Type locality: Near Silver City, New Mexico. Distribution : Texas to Arizona and central Mexico.