286 SOUTH AFRICAN FLOWERING PLANTS. 



studied in the commencement of germination, as 

 suggested in the Introduction to this book. 



The student should examine some wheat and oats 

 when in blossom, and he will find the essential features 

 just the same as in Bro'mus (Fig. 112, I.-III.). 



In most spikelets the topmost florets are barren. 



u. 



III. 



\'^v^ 



Fig. 112.— I. a, Split leaf-sheath of a Grass ; h, ligule ; d, part of the blade of the 

 leaf; c, node of the culm. II. Expanded spikelet of the Oat, with a fertile and a 

 barren flower, rs ; G, glumes ; re, flowering glume, with awn, a ; vi, the pale ; 

 within are visible the feathery stigmas. III. Fertile flower with the flowering 

 glume removed. 



consisting only of two glumes. In wheat, the lower- 

 most florets, usually three, bear grains, but the upper 

 ones, as of oat and Bro'mus, are abortive. 



This most useful of orders has so many valuable 

 species supplying grain for human beings, corn and 

 food for animals, that it would be impossible to describe 

 them; but although the family is so large, there is a 



