Setaria distantiflora (A. Rich.) Pilg.

Panicum distantiflorum A. Rich, in Sagra, Hist. Cuba 11: 304
1850.
Plants cespitose, glabrous; culms 60-80 cm. high, slender, wiry, compressed, producing slender, sometimes fascicled branches from all the nodes; leaf-sheaths longer than the internodes, but narrow and sheathing the joints only at the base, flattened, a minute tuft of hairs on each auricle; ligule a ring of very short hairs; blades erect, firm, narrower than the summit of the sheath, linear to almost capillary, as much as 30 cm. long, 1—2 mm. wide, mostly strongly involute, at least the lower commonly more or less curled, usually with a few hairs at the base; panicles numerous, 2-7 cm. long, very narrow, the branches appressed, scarcely overlapping, the lower 8-15 mm. long, the branchlets bearing 1-3 subsessile spikelets, the setiform prolongation of the axis rarely equaling the spikelet, usually not more than 1 mm. long ; spikelets 1.5 mm. long, 0.7 mm. wide, ellipsoid, acute, glabrous; first glume about half as long as the spikelet, acute, strongly 5-nerved; second glume obtuse, two thirds to three fourths as long as the fruit and the strongly 7-nerved, acute, sterile lemma; fruit 1.3 mm. long, 0,6 mm. wide, elliptic, pointed, finely rugose.
Type locality: Cuba.
Distribution: Bahamas, Cuba, and Hispaniola; also in Curacao.