Tall aquatic monoecious grasses, with long flat leaf-blades and paniculate inflorescence. Spikelets 1-flowered, the staminate borne at the top of the branches, the pistillate at the base. Scales 2, nearly equal, membranous, the outer one in the pistillate spikelets broad, acute and bearing an awn. Stamens 6. Styles united. Grain nearly globose, the pericarp readily separable. [Name in allusion to the resemblance of this grass to Zizania.]

A monotypic genus, of temperate and tropical America. Type species: Zizania miliacea Michx.

1. Zizaniopsis Miliacea (Michx.) Doell & Aschers. Zizaniopsis

Fig. 398

Zizania miliacea Michx. Fl. Bor. Am. I: 74. 1803. Z. miliacea Doell & Aschers.; Baill. Hist. PI. 12: 293. 1893.

Culms 4°-l5° tall from a long and creeping root-stock, robust, glabrous. Sheaths loose, glabrous; ligule 4"-7" long, thin-membranous; blades 1° long or more, 1/2'-l' wide, smooth, glabrous; panicle dense, i°-i 1/2° long, narrow; branches erect; staminate spikelets 3"-4" long, the outer scale 5-nerved, the inner 3-nerved, both acute; pistillate spikelets about 3" long, the outer scale about equalling the inner, bearing an awn 1"-3" long, scabrous, 5-nerved; inner scale 3-nerved, acute.

Swamps. Virginia to Ohio (according to Riddell), south to Florida and Texas. June-July.