THE FAMILIES OF FLOWERING PLANTS. 



By Charles Louis Pollard. 



III. THE GRASSES, SEDGES AND RUSHES. 



FROM sad experience I am able to assert as a fact that there are 

 no plant families so difficult for the beginner to distinguish as 

 those which the farmer would designate by the comprehensive 

 term "hay." The plants agree in having small, inconspicuous 

 flowers, and the absence of anything flower-like in their appearance is 

 so marked that I have been assured many times by rural friends that 

 *' grasses just grow seeds without any blossoms. " Nor can we rely on 

 habitat to separate these groups, for the hay cut from the salt marsh 

 as well as that from the upland meadows will probable contain an in- 

 termixture of all three. 



There are, however, important differences, and since for forage 

 purposes the grasses are far more important than either sedges or 

 rushes, it is well for even the amateur to be able to understand them 

 thoroughly. 



The GraniinccB (sometimes called Poacece), or genuine grasses, 

 form one of the largest families of flowering plants, over 300 genera 

 and 3,500 species being recognized. The inflorescence consists of 

 what are technically called "spikelets," each of which is made up of 

 small, imbricated, chaffy scales. Some of these scales are empty; 

 others enclose the stamens, usually three, and the pistil; and each of 

 these flower-bearing scales usually encloses an additional, very slen- 

 der scale known as the " palet." Every individual floret thus consists 

 of the essential organs, stamens and pistils, surrounded by two pro- 

 tecting scales, a number of which are borne together on a slender axis, 

 forming a spikelet ; while the innumerable spikelets may be clustered 

 in a spike, as in timothy, or borne in an open, branching panicle, as 

 in red-top and many other grasses. 



The leaves of these plants are so well known that the term grass- 

 like is common as a standard of comparison. At the junction of leaf 

 and stem, where the base of the leaf usually forms a complete en- 

 wrapping sheath, will be noticed in most cases a peculiar membranous 

 ring or protuberance ; this is called the ligule, a name derived from its 

 suggestion of a little thong or strap, and it is an indisputable proof, if 

 present, that we have a grass and not a sedge or rush before us. The 

 stems are usually hollow, except at the joints. 



All of our cereals, as wheat, rye, oats, etc., are derived from va- 

 rious grasses, many of which have their wild relatives growing abun- 



