THE GRASS FAMILT. 421 



Section 3.— GLUMACEOUS. 



CXLIV.— THE GRASS FAMILY. Gramindcea. 



In its popular application, and especially with farmers, the word 

 "grass" is synonymous with herbage. Botanists restrict it to a par- 

 ticular family of Endogens, represented in the chief components of 

 hay, and in the invaluable plants which yield corn, as wheat, rice, 

 barley, oats, rye, millet, and maize, also in the bamboo and the sugar- 

 cane, all of which latter are in structure precisely similar to the ordinary 

 grasses that cows eat, but with their stems or seeds developed to a great 

 size. The corn-bearing species are generally called the Cerealia, in 

 allusion to the mythological goddess Ceres, whose assigned province 

 was the guardianship of the harvest. 



The grasses have cylindrical and jointed stems, in the smaller kinds 

 termed straws, and which are usually hollow and erect. They are 

 closed up solidly at the joints, and those of the cerealia in particular 



Fig. 200. 

 Flower of Grass (magnified), 



are often hardened on the outside by a deposit of flinty matter from 

 the sap. The leaves are as simple as can be conceived, consisting only 

 of fine thread-like veins running side by side from the base of the leaf 

 to the apex, with the usual cellular tissue and cuticle, and are in every 

 case very thin, long, narrow, and pointed. Sometimes they are exceed- 

 ingly flaccid, sometimes wire-like, sometimes so dry and keen-edged as 

 to cut like the blade of a knife. They consist at the lower part, of a 

 long tubular sheath, corresponding to petiole, which is split length- 

 ways, and surrounds the straw, the upper half forming a kind of lamina 

 to it. At the point where the lamina springs from the stem, on the 

 inside, there is a small and delicate membranous appendage called the 

 " ligule." The flowers consist simply of small and usually very minute 

 green bracts, placed alternately upon the axis that supports them, one 

 above the other, instead of in whorls or rings, as in Exogens, and in 

 the liliaceous families of Endogens. (Fig. 200.) The stamens are 



