GRASSES, WHAT THEY ARE AND WHERE 

 THEY LIVE 



By A. S. Hitchcock 



Principal Botanist in Charge of Systematic Agrostology, United States Depart- 

 ment of Agriculture 



[With 8 plates] 



The flowering plants of the world are divided among about 300 

 families. Of these the grass family (Gramineae or Poaceae) is the 

 most useful to man. From the botanical standpoint grasses are 

 plants which possess certain structural characteristics that differen- 

 tiate them from other families. The grasses were recognized as a 

 natural group long before there was a science of botany or a system 

 of classification, just as palms, cactuses, and legumes were recog- 

 nized as plant families even by primitive peoples. Our common 

 meadow, pasture, and lawn grasses, such as timothy, redtop, blue- 

 grass, and Bermuda grass, are known to nearly everyone. Many 

 people also know as grasses the numerous wild prairie grasses and 

 such common weeds as crabgrass and quackgrass. But it is news 

 to some that the grass family includes the grains or cereals, such as 

 wheat, oats, rye, barley, corn (maize), and rice, as well as sugar- 

 cane, sorghum, and millet, and the woody-stemmed bamboos. 



Those who are not very discerning may include among the grasses 

 other plants with long narrow leaves, such as sedges, rushes, and even 

 narrow-leaved lilies. The tendency to include the term grass as 

 a part of the common name of plants, other than grasses, having nar- 

 row leaves, is shown by such names as beargrass {Xcrophyllum 

 tenax), a kind of lily, common in our Northwestern States; blue- 

 eyed-grass (species of Sisi/rinchium) , small plants of the iris family; 

 ribgrass {Plantago lanceolata), a narrow-leaved plantain; eelgrass 

 {Zostera inarlna)^ a submerged plant of the pondweed family grow- 

 ing along our coasts; sawgrass {Marlscus or Cladiwin), a large 

 sedge with vicious saw-edged leaves, especially abundant in the 

 Florida everglades; and stargrass {Hypoxis)^ of the amaryllis fam- 

 ily, with small yellow flowers. 



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