Compilation
Panicum raripilum

A loosely tufted perennial, with long trailing and rooting stolons from a very slender rhizome, the flowering culms rising 1/2–1 ft. above the leafy tufts. Culms filiform, many-noded, ascending, simple or sparingly branched, terete, smooth and glabrous, nodes mostly long-exserted. Leaf-sheaths tight, terete, finely striate, quite glabrous and smooth, usually much shorter than the internodes; ligule reduced to a fine ciliate membranous rim; blades lanceolate to linear-oblong from a rounded clasping base, acute, from less than 1/2 to over 3/4 in. by 1 1/4–2 1/2 lin., flat, firm, spreading or more or less deflexed, quite glabrous, smooth, midrib and primary lateral nerves (2 to 3 on each side) very fine and sometimes indistinct with 3–4 secondary nerves in the intervals, connected by cross-veins. Panicles very shortly exserted, erect, ovate in outline, from 1/2 to over 1 (rarely up to 3) in. long and broad, rigidly open and loose, divided up to the third degree; common axis angular, smooth; internodes irregularly short and long, in average panicles from 1–4 lin. long; primary branches like their divisions much spreading, to horizontal or deflexed, and bearing from some distance above the base 4–2 solitary spikelets or downwards 3–2-spiculate branchlets, finely filiform or like the pedicels capillary and smooth, the latter 1–2 lin. long, rarely longer, with truncate tips. Spikelets elliptic-oblong, subacute, 2/3 to almost 3/4 lin. long, somewhat plump, quite smooth. Glumes thinly membranous, finely but distinctly nerved, unequal; lower ovate, acute, about half the length of the spikelet, 3-nerved; upper corresponding to spikelet in length and outline, 5-nerved. Lower floret barren: valve like upper glume; valvule oblong, shorter. Upper floret hermaphrodite, broadly ovate-elliptic in outline, subapiculate, whitish, 1/2– 5/8 lin. long, polished; valve and valvule subcoriaceous; anthers 1/4 lin. long. Grain rotundate-elliptic in outline, almost 1/2 lin. long.