84 Kansas Academy of Science. 



Flowers (florets) perfect or unisexual, monoecious or dioecious. Peri- 

 anth hypogynous, consisting of a dorsal glumaceous or hyaline sepal, called 

 a glume, flowering glume, or lemma, and a double ventral sepal or a pair of 

 ventral sepals modified and fused together into a single glumaceous leaf 

 that partially encloses the seed and is called the palet or palea, these re- 

 taining their two carinae and two points (teeth). Inside of these all that 

 remain of three petals are one to three, usually two, minute hyaline scales 

 dorsally (rarely one ventrally) placed and called lodicules. 



Androecium of one to six, usually three, stamens; filaments slender; 

 anthers bisporangiate (two-celled), exserted, versatile or adnate. 



Gynoecium of two or three united carpels, rarely one. Ovulary uni- 

 locular, one-ovuled. Styles two or three, distinct or united, rarely one. 

 Stigmas usually plumose. Fruit a seed-like grain (caryopsis), with a large 

 farinaceous endosperm and a small embryo on the side opposite the hilum. 



(This is the most important of all botanical orders, on account of its 

 farinaceous seeds, which furnish the principal food of mankind, and of its 

 herbage, which furnishes the principal food of domestic animals.) 



Family 32. Panicace^. Panic-grass Family. 



Includes the following tribes: a, Maydese with spikelets unisexual; b, 

 Andropogonese , with spikelets in pairs; c, Panicese, with spikelets perfect 

 and spheroidal; and d, Oryzex, with spikelets laterally compressed. 



Plants herbaceous, annual or perennial; culms always annual. Spikelets 

 one- or two-flowered, subtended by an involucel of one or two empty scales, 

 usually two; when two-flowered, the first or lower is staminate, the upper 

 one perfect and fertile; rachilla articulated below the empty scales, the 

 spherical or dorsally compressed spikelets falling from the pedicels entire, 

 either singly or in groups, together with joints of the articulate rachilla. 

 Tribe a. Maydese. Maize Tribe. Spikelets monoecious; staminate and 

 carpellate flowers on different parts of the same plant. Flowering 

 glume and palet hyaline. 



201. Euchlaena luxurians Schrader. Teosinte (God-gift Grass); Gua- 

 temala Grass. Planted for fodder. Does not ripen seeds here. Occasional. 



202 Zea mays L. Indian Corn; Maize. Includes dent, flint, pop, sugar 

 corn, and other horticultural subspecies. Survives the winter occasionally 

 for a year or so, with but slight tendency toward becoming naturalized. 



203. Tripsacum dactyloides L. Gama-grass. Sloughs and wet places all 

 over the state, as far west as Ellis and Kinsley, or further; common; but 

 rare beyond the points named. June. (ASU) 



Tribe h. Andropogonese. Blue-stem Tribe. Spikelets in compound race- 

 mose spikes, two at each joint of the articulate rachis, the one sessile 

 and perfect, the other pedicellate, and either staminate, neuter, or 

 reduced to a mere pedicel and minute scale; empty involucel scales 

 as large as the flowering glume and very firm; flowering glume 

 usually awned and subtending a palet and perfect flower. Rachillas 

 and barren pedicels usually bearded. 



204. Coix lachryma-jobi L. Tear-grass; Job's Tears. Often survives 

 the winter and grows spontaneously from self-sown seeds. Not natu- 

 ralized. 



