Classification of Plants 



247 



in the wind without danger of breaking. The out-growth 

 called the ligule at the union of the sheath and blade turns 

 off the water caught by the leaves, which is led down to the 

 fibrous roots. The stomata are protected in the creases of the 

 stems and leaves, and by the leaves 

 rolling up in dry weather. 



Briza maxima, L., the pretty 

 quaking grass, will be good for study- 

 ing the flowers, as it is found so 

 generally distributed. The oval 

 spikelets are borne in racemes or 

 panicles. They nod gracefully on 

 slender pedicels, whence the name, 

 meaning, in Greek, to slumber. At 

 the lower end of the spikelet are two 

 short green glumes of unequal size, 

 with 5-7 nerves. They are keeled, 

 that is, like the bottom of a boat. 

 They have no flowers in their axils, 

 but protect the whole spikelet. The 

 glumes above them all contain flowers. 

 For each flower there is one outer 

 heart-shaped rounded glume, also 

 keeled, and an inner, much smaller, 

 flat, and two-nerved glume or palea 

 (the flowering glumes are called 

 paleae to distinguish them from the 

 empty glumes), which clings closely to the grain. When the 

 three stamens are ready to shed their pollen, the glumes open, 

 and the slender filaments hang out the swinging anthers. The 

 ovary has two feathery stigmas. Between the ovary and the 

 outer glume there are two very small bodies called lodicules. 



In the bamboos there are three lodicules longer than the ovary, which 

 suggests that the grasses may once have had a perianth. 



Large as the order is, the flowers are very similar in the different 

 genera. The outer glume is awned in the Oat {Avena) ; that is, it has a 

 long twisted spike extending from the midrib. The awn is common to 

 other genera. Rice has 6 stamens. In Cojjir, "Job's Tears," and Maize 

 the flowers are monoecious, The stamens here are toward the top of the 



Fig. 224. — Panicle of Briza 

 maxima, L. (After " Bo- 

 tanical Magazine".) 



