Grasses 349 
Couch-grass (Agropyrum repens) when it gets hold 
of garden or cornfield. 
The flowers are variously grouped in spikes, racemes, 
or panicles, and it is not easy for a tyro used only 
to the larger flowers of Roses, Orchids, Lilies, etc., to 
make out their structure. The surest way to under- 
stand a Grass-flower is to analyse it, taking a spikelet 
and pulling it to pieces. A spikelet is what appears 
to be a single flower, and it must be understood that 
its parts vary in the different genera—both in the 
number of its envelopes and of the real flowers it 
contains. The envelopes are chaffy scales corre- 
sponding to the bracts and spathes of ordinary plants, 
but here they are called glumes—the Latin word for 
chaff or husks. 
Usually a spikelet contains a pair of flowerless 
glumes enclosing the boat-shaped flowering glume 
and a flat scale (palea). Within the 
flowering glume are two little colour- 
less scales called lodicules, representing 
the perianth of the Lily, and the essen- » 
tial organs; these are a one-celled ovary, 
with two long plumy stigmas and 
three stamens. As all Grasses are 
fertilised by the wind, the stigmas 
stretch far apart in order that they 
may the better catch the flying pollen-grain on 
their sticky feathers. The stamens consist of a 
long hair-like filament, upon which a _ two-celled 
anther is so beautifully poised by its middle that 
as it hangs out of the flower it sways in the 
slightest breath of air and shakes out its pollen 
to the breeze. ‘ 
Grass-flower 
