THE SEDGE FAMILY. 441 



Very few Graminacese are grown as ornamental plants. The only common one, 

 after the ribbon-grass (No. 5) and the others already named, is the greater quaking- 

 grass, or Briza maxima. In curious gardens may occasionally be seen the 

 Lagurus ovatus, (E.B. XIX. IS'ii.) the Hordeum jubatum, and the feather-grass, 

 or Stipa pennata, (E. B, xix. 1356.) resembling the long airy plumes of the Bird 

 of Paradise ; and good green-houses are generally provided with the fragrant- 

 leaved lemon-grass, or Andropogon Schananthus, from the Cape of Good Hope, 

 and often with the sugar-cane, and the bamboo, or Bamhusa arundinacea. 

 Maize or Indian com, millet, and Egyptian or many-headed wheat, are sometimes 

 raised for curiosity, the two first ripening tolerably when the autumn is fine and 

 warm. The predominant cereals of the district ai'e the beardless or winter wheat, 

 oats, and the six -rowed barley. A little rye is sown here and there, and some- 

 times a little two-rowed barley. 



CXLV.— THE SEDGE FAMILY. Ci/perdcea. 



Superficially, the plants of this family bear a strong resemblance to 

 grasses, with which alone it is possible to confound them. In many 

 points of structure they also approach very closely. The roots are 

 fibrous ; the stems slender and straw-like, but instead of being round, 

 hollow, and jointed, here they are usually triangular and solid, and rarely 

 provided with joints and partitions. The leaves, like those of grasses, 

 are long, narrow, and slender, but instead of soft and succulent, 

 usually hard, rigid, and coarse, and often so exceedingly sharp at the 

 edges as to cut the fingers if they be gathered incautiously. When 

 provided with sheaths at the base, forming a tube round the stem, as 

 in grasses, the tube is not slit down the side. The flowers, as in grasses, 

 are borne in little brown or greenish " spikelets," the latter being 

 either solitary and terminal, or disposed in panicles, spikes, or racemes, 

 and occasionally in umbels. Every spikelet is placed in the axil of a 

 leafy or scaly bract, consisting in itself of several smaller imbricated 

 scales or bracts, in the axils of which are the minute and sessile 

 flowers. The latter are destitute of perianth, except occasionally a 

 few bristles or minute scales, and consist of three, or rarely two, 

 stamens, and a solitary pistil, the ovary one-celled, the style more or 

 less deeply divided into two or three flattened or linear branches, 

 which are not feathery as in grasses. The fruit is small and seed-like, 

 flattened when the styles or its branches are two ; triangular when 

 they are three. In some genera the flowers are unisexual, and in one 

 large and important company, constituting the genus Car ex, they are 



