Biological Papers. 83 



tion almost invariably parallel, the distal ends often radiating, campylo- 

 drome, or convergent; stomata (except in the Smilacales) longitudinally 

 intracellular on both surfaces; the bases (sheaths) of the laminodia or 

 phyllodia always with parallel nervation, greatly elongated, and commonly 

 sheathing the stem of the plant. Parts of the flower in threes or a multiple 

 of three, seldom in fours, rarely or never in fives. Embryo usually with a 

 single terminal cotyledon and a lateral plumule. 



CLAS IX.* GLUMIFER.!:. GLUME-BEARERS. 



Monocotyl, with Gbimaceous Perianth. 

 Floral envelopes glumaceous, persistent, or none. Perianth chaffy or of 

 membranous or scarious scale-like or bristle-formed segments free from the 

 ovulary. Fruit usually a grain inclosed in a husk, or a naked nut-like 

 bchene, rarely a utricle. 



Subclass A. GLUMIFLOR.ffi;. Husk-flowers. 

 Glume-flowered Monocotyls. 

 Perianth three- or six-parted, the parts glumaceous, or of fewer hyaline 

 scales, or mere bristles, or entirely wanting. Flowers solitary and sessile, 

 in the axils of and subtended by or inclosed in husk-like scales or gluma- 

 ceous bracts (glumes or chaff), or clustered in umbelloid or corymbose 

 chaffy panicles in the axils of leafy bracts. Androecium normally of three 

 or six stamens, though usually three or fewer, all with bisporangiate an- 

 thers. Pollination anemophilous. Gynoecium with a single unilocular one- 

 ovuled ovulary, with styles two (one or three), and stigmas hairy or plu- 

 mose. Fruit a grain or an achene, or a three- valved loculicidal capsule con- 

 taining few or many seeds. Endosperm farinaceous. 



Order XVI. POALES. The Grasses and Canes. 



Erect plants, usually herbaceous and perennial, rarely woody and arbores- 

 cent, as in Bamhusacex. Stems (culms) generally hollow, with solid nodes; 

 sometimes comparatively solid throughout, as in common cornstalk; normally 

 terete, with or without a groove on the side of the stem next each leaf, and 

 always with a firm fibrous exterior and silicious cuticle. 



Foliage consists of narrow, linear, dorsally compressed laminodia (never 

 in this latitude with a true lamina and petiole), alternately on opposite 

 sides of the stem. A laminodium of a grass consists of two conspicuous 

 parts: (a) The upper or distal part, called the blade, corresponding to the 

 petiole of a dicotyl leaf, which part is usually firm, flat, carinate, linear, 

 parallel-nerved, and answers the same purpose as a dicotyl leaf, with im- 

 portant differences; and (6) the lower or proximal part, called the sheath, 

 corresponding to the base of a dicotyl leaf, which part is generally length- 

 ened and broadened, and surrounds and infolds the stem of the plant, with 

 the edges free and separate or slightly overlapping, and having a small 

 ciliate or smooth ring (ligule) at its summit or its junction with the blade. 



Inflorescence paniculate, racemose, orspicate, consisting of flat spikelets 

 composed of one to many florets, each spikelet subtended by an involucel 

 of two glumaceous "empty scales," which maybe larger than the flowering 

 glumes, equal to them in size, or smaller, or either one or both entirely 

 wanting. They may themselves be equal or unequal in size. The rachilla 

 is articulated below the scales in Panicaceae, above in Poacese. 



