CHAPTER XXIX. 
LIST OF SEEDS, BULBS, DUBERS EUG COMPRISING 
OUR WATER-FOWLS’ ESPECIAL FOOD — WITH 
GRASSES, CANES, FLAGS, ETC., FOR COVER. 
(Taken from Gray's Manual. ) 
Order HYDROCHARIDACEZ  (Frogbit Family 
—Tape or Fel Grass). 
Tribe VALLISNERIA :—Flowers strictly dicecious ; the 
sterile numerous and crowded in a head on a conical 
receptacle, enclosed in an ovate at length three-valved 
spathe, which is borne on a very short scape; stamens 
mostly three. T[ertile flowers solitary and sessile in a 
tubular spathe upon an exceedingly lengthened scape. 
Perianth (calyx) three-parted in the sterile flowers ; in 
the fertile with a linear tube coherent with the one- 
celled ovary, but not extending beyond it; three-lobed 
(the lobes obovate); also three lineal small petals. 
Stigmas three, large, nearly sessile, two-lobed. Ovules 
very numerous, scattered over the walls, orthotropous. 
Fruit elongated, cylindrical, berry-like. Stemless 
plants, with long lineal grass-like leaves, whoi!* sub- 
merged. The staminate clusters being confined to the 
bottom by the shortness of the scape, the flower buds 
themselves break off from their short pedicels and 
float on the surface, where they shed their pollen around 
the fertile flowers which are raised to the surface by 
sudden growth at the same time ; afterward the thread- 
form scapes (two to four feet long) coil up spirally, 
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