186 



THE TRUE GRASSES. 



mostly blue-green spikes. Spikelets appearing 

 as if cut off transversely because the third and 

 fourth flowers scarcely reach to the point of the 

 two lower ones ; flowering glumes compressed, 

 navicular, many-nerved, awned ; fruit 8-12 mm. 

 long. Original form unknown; perhaps not ;i 

 true species ; it may have originated by culture. 

 It gives rise, but rarely, to a fertile cross with 

 Tr. sativum ; while 

 the crossing of the 

 sativum races among 

 each other is per- 

 fectly fertile, that of 

 the monococcum with 

 the sativum races is 

 entirely infertile . 

 Poland is by no 

 means its native 

 country ; more likely 

 it originated in Spain, 

 where it is now cul- 

 tivated on a large 

 scale in Leon, Old 

 Castile, and the Ba- 

 learic Isles. It is 

 also still cultivated 

 in Italy and Abys- 

 sinia, but in other 

 places its culture, if 

 it ever existed, has f 

 disappeared. The 

 long and slender 

 fruit resembles rye, but is on the whole larger, 

 and under the name of " Giant Eye " it has 

 sometimes been fraudulently sold to farmers. 

 The returns are poor on account of its having 

 few kernels. 



Wheat flour furnishes the best and whitest 

 bread, yet not all wheat is alike adapted for 

 bread-making, since for this purpose a sufficient 



102 

 man " Wheat. 

 Tr. sativum di- 

 coccum. 



Ger- Fig.103.— Oue-grain- 

 ed Wheat. Tr. 

 monococcum L. 



