Plants perennial; shortly rhizomatous. Culms 5-160 cm, erect, not rooting at the lower nodes; nodes glabrous. Sheaths densely pubescent, occasionally glabrous; ligules 1-2.2 mm; blades to 55 cm long, 2.2-8.3 mm wide, conduplicate (occasionally flat), glabrous below, pubescent above. Panicles terminal, with 2-10 racemosely arranged branches; branches 0.8-10.3 cm, divergent to spreading, often arcuate, terminating in a spikelet; branch axes 0.8-2 mm wide, narrowly winged, glabrous, margins scabrous. Spikelets 2.1-3.1 mm long, 2-2.8 mm wide, paired, imbricate, appressed to divergent from the branch axes, orbicular to suborbicular, stramineous. Lower glumes absent; upper glumes and lower lemmas glabrous, 3-veined, margins entire; upper florets white to light yellow. Caryopses 1.9-2.1 mm, brown. 2n = 20, 40.

Paspalum praecox grows in pitcher plant bogs, wet pine flatwoods, wet savannahs, prairies, and wet streamhead ecotones. It is restricted to the United States, growing predominantly on the southeastern coastal plain.

Culms erect, 5-15 dm, usually solitary; sheaths glabrous, villous, or sericeous; blades 3-5 mm wide, often pilose; panicles usually surpassing the lvs; racemes 3-5, spreading, 2-6 cm; spikelets paired or solitary even in the same raceme, flattened, less than a third as thick as wide, broadly oval to suborbicular, overlapping, 2.3-3.2 mm, glabrous; glume and sterile lemma 3-veined, the lateral veins near the margin; 2n=20, 40. Swamps, wet woods, and pine-barrens on the coastal plain; se. Va. to Tex. The typical form has the lower sheaths glabrous or nearly so; our plants, with hairy sheaths, are var. curtisianum (Steud.) Vasey (P. lentiferum).

Gleason, Henry A. & Cronquist, Arthur J. 1991. Manual of vascular plants of northeastern United States and adjacent Canada. lxxv + 910 pp.

©The New York Botanical Garden. All rights reserved. Used by permission.