40 Mr. Woops on the Genera of European Grasses. 
a scariose margin, and are sometimes furnished with a point or seta, never 
with a separable awn. The inner palea is scariose and pellucid, except on 
the two nerves or keels, which are green, and at which the palea is uniformly 
folded. The panicle is one-sided in Melica, Sclerochloa, Dactylis, and Festuca; 
in Glyceria fluitans, and in Cynosurus echinatus, elegans, and aureus. Oreo- 
chloa and Cynosurus cristatus have a one-sided spike. The rest have a panicle 
equal all round. The particulars, some or other of which distinguish them 
from the Avenaceæ, are the small glumes, quite unequal to give any important 
protection to the spiculæ, and, as already noticed, the awn and the firm hairs 
at the base of the florets in that tribe, where they exist. This tendency to the 
production of one kind of arms or pubescence rather than of another, while 
the plant is often without either, can only with great difficulty be admitted 
into an artificial character ; yet, I think, even there some use of it may be 
made, and in tracing natural affinities no botanist will deny its importance. 
Schismus and Melica have large glumes, and so in some degree has Sesleria. 
None of the Festucaceæ have long silky hairs like those of the Arundinacee, 
and none of them have the spicula in a simple 
this constitutes their leading difference from t 
Triticum Na 
spike with opposite rows; and 
he Hordeacee. It is true that 
dus, and T. unilaterale have their flowers in one-sided spikes, 
which may render it doubtful whether they should not be placed among the 
Festucaceæ, but not whether any of the Festucacee should be joined to that 
tribe. Festuca maritima and 
F. divaricata, two plants certainly of the same 
genus, and which with Kunth I refer to Festuca, 
have their spiculz sessile on 
a channelled and toothed rachis. 
But the rachis is branched and triangular, 
the spicule occupying only two faces of the prism, making the whole inflo- 
rescence one-sided, and giving to each plant quite the air of a Festuca. Tyiti- 
cum loliaceum (Sclerochloa loliacea) has also a one-sided disposition th roughout, 
and the spiculæ are not quite sessile. The genera are: 
keeled, nerved (not ibbed) = 
tue , not ri » acuminate, or with a straj i 
: an ; > raight terminal or 
2. Schismus. Glumes ribbed, obtuse, much larger than the paleæ ! and nearly 
