THE PIvANT WORIvD 147 



In 1837 it was brought to the notice of European botanists by a 

 description published by Schlechtendal, and for some time after that it 

 received no small amount of attention from them on account of its curious 

 abnormality. 



In order to emphasize the points of interest of this plant it might be 

 well to describe briefly the normal arrangement and structure of the bar- 

 ley flower. 



A glance at Plate VII will show that barley flowers are borne in a 

 dense terminal spike, at each joint of which three flowers stand side by 

 side. Each of these is subtended by two narrow glumes, usually shorter 

 than the flowering glumes. In the case of the two-rowed barley, only 

 one flower at each node produces a grain, but the glumes of all three are 

 always present. Each flower of barley has two glumes, an outer and an 

 inner one, surrounding the three stamens and the single ovary that later 

 matures into the grain, which fills out the glumes and remains, in most 

 cases, attached to them. 



The ' ' beardless ' ' barley does not differ materially from the ordinarj'^ 

 cultivated plant, except in the structure of the outer floral glume. As 

 will be seen in the plate, the outer glume of barley usually ends in along 

 stiff awn when the flower is fertile ; when it is not, the awn is undevel- 

 oped. In this " beardless " barley, however, the tip of the outer glume 

 is without an awn, but bears instead a three-branched structure which 

 gives the species its name. Of these branches, the two lateral ones end 

 usually in sharp tips and the other, the central one, becomes a sort of 

 hood or sack. 



A careful examination of one of these glumes, when it is yet young 

 and green and therefore easy to manipulate, shows some bewildering 

 facts. It will be found that this central hood is an extension of the outer 

 glume,* the recurving edges of which overlap and often become more or 

 less grown together. In the base of this hood, which is its outer end, 

 one finds a variety of interesting conditions. Most commonly there will 

 be found the rudimentary parts of a flower, unequally developed. Again, 

 one may find unmistakable signs of an embryonic spike or spikelet, that 

 is, a slender axis bearing small bracts, very irregular and decidedly imma- 

 ture. Or again, one may find only a single bract like the inner glume 

 of the regular flower attached at this distal base and lying inside the 

 folding edges of the hood. 



It becomes evident, after examining a number of these glumes, that 

 the structures produced in it follow no fixed rule, but assume any one of 

 numerous forms and follow it to a greater or less degree of completion. 

 There is an instance published where a mature seed, somewhat smaller 



* This extension is obviously not a metamorphosed awn, as one often finds a short tooth or blunt 

 awn on the upper sideof the glume at the juncture of the main glume with the proliferation. 



