FAKMERS' INSTITUTES. 287 



GRASSES AXD FORAGE PLANTS. 

 BY PROFESSOR W. J. BEAL. 



I am expected to speak of the grasses, oue of the largest and most widely 

 distributed families of plants. Much may be said in favor of the grasses, taken 

 in the more limited sense as used by botanists. The true grasses (GrmninecB) 

 are quite easily distinguished, so that almost any one, with a very little atten- 

 tion, can learn to recognize them with a good degree of certainty. In common 

 language the farmer classifies as grasses all plants used for pasture and meadow. 

 The botanist classifies plants according to a large number of peculiarities of 

 structure, leaving out the sejoarate uses to which they may be placed. One 

 small, artificial group constitutes the cereals, which are raised to a great extent 

 for the size and quality of their grains. These are very valuable for the food 

 of man and his domestic animals. The chief cereal grasses are wheat, Indian 

 corn, rye, barley, oats, and rice. They constitute a largo part of the food of 

 the human race the world over. A much larger number are valuable for mead- 

 ows and pastures. The grasses are annuals or perennials, mostly herbs, with 

 fibrous roots, — sometimes a creeping stem or rhizome. There is in no case a 

 tap root to a grass. The stem is round, or nearly so, generally hollow, as in 

 wheat, sometimes solid, as in broom corn. The nodes or joints are all solid, 

 and usually swollen. The leaves are alternate, two-ranked, one starting from 

 each node, so that as we hold a stem before us there will be here a leaf to the 

 left, a little above is the second leaf to the right, a little farther up the third 

 leaf to tlie left, directly over the first, and so on to the top of every straight 

 stem. The lower part of the leaf makes a sheath around the stem. This sheath 

 is split down, or open on one side, opposite the center of the back of the base of 

 the leaf. The blade or expanded portion is usually long and narrow, with no 

 notches along the margins. They may be stripped or torn into long fibres. 

 They are parallel-veined. Where the blade leaves the stem and sheath there is 

 often a membranous appendage called the ligule. 



I will not here enter into the more technical description of the flowers by 

 which the different grasses are mostly distinguished. The family is a remark- 

 ably natural one, and, contrary to a general rule^ it can be quite easily described 

 by its stems and leaves alone, with suflficient accuracy to distinguish it from any 

 other family. To repeat, the leaves are entire at the edge, parallel-veined, tivo- 

 ranJced, and the sheath split down on the side opposite the blade. 



Grasses all bear flowers, some of which are here shown upon the chart. This 

 is a head or spike of timothy. Here are the separate flowers. This is a spikelet, 

 that a panicle, of a Poa. 



Sedges are very common on our marshes, and constitute a large part of what 

 is often known as marsh hay. They are also, to some extent, found on high 

 land of poor quality. All sedges make very poor fodder, when compared with 

 the better grasses. Sedges have three-ranked leaves, or leaves spreading in 

 three directions instead of in two directions, as in the grasses. The sheath may 

 be quite short, but in all cases it is closed, making a tight tube around the stem. 

 These characters are enough to distinguish our sedges from the grasses. The 

 clovers and the like bear flowers which are more or less conspicuous. Tlie leaves 

 are compound, having three or more leaflets to each main leaf stalk. The 



