Rbodora 
JOURNAL OF 
THE NEW ENGLAND BOTANICAL CLUB 
Vol. 14. September, 1912. No. 165 
A SUGGESTION FOR SUMMER OBSERVATIONS. 
Cora H. CLARKE. 
(Plates 97 to 99.) 
INCOMPLETE and imperfect observations on any subject do not 
enhance the observer’s scientific reputation, but they are perhaps of 
worth by calling to the subject the attention of those whose studies 
may be of more value. And in the case of grass anthesis, if many 
persons should happen to make notes on the same grass species, their 
notes, if agreeing, will give us fixed rules, or, if differing, will show us 
range of variation in the flowering habits of the species. 
With this apology, I offer the result of my own desultory examina- 
tions, made in the summer of 1911, having been incited thereto by 
reading for the first time that, in grasses, “The opening of the flowers 
caused by the divergence of the two glumes is effected by the lodicules. 
They become fleshy and succulent and usually spheroidally swollen 
at base, by means of which they overcome the resistance of the elastic 
outer glume and move it outward. After fading, which occurs at 
latest in one to two hours, they shrivel up again into small, thin 
leaves." 
This closing again in * one to two hours" must be one of the hundred 
lies a lecturer has to tell to make his story straight. Probably it is 
true for most species, but in Arrhenatherum elatius I noted two indi- 
vidual spikelets, the flowers of which kept open twenty-four hours; 
and two flowers in a marked spikelet of Poa annua kept open six hours 
1 A distinguished lecturer at Wood's Hole once remarked: ''I never make a straight 
story in my lecture without feeling I have told a hundred lies.” 
