18 THE BOOK OF USEFUL PLANTS 



dozen stalks. The plants from feeble seed may 

 have but two or three feeble stalks. So the 

 farmer who sows poor seed is wasting time and 

 labor. 



When the wheat stalks are full-grown they 

 blossom in long spikes or heads, made up of "spike- 

 lets" (side branches), each with a few flowers, and 

 enclosed in papery coverings, called outer glumes. 

 These glumes are set alternately upon the stem. 

 Each pair of glumes opens at flowering time, 

 exposing one to four pairs of smaller, more delicate 

 glumes each one a wheat blossom in the bud. The 

 smaller glume is the palet; it lies next to the stem. 

 The larger one may have a long, rough spine that 

 protrudes an inch or more. Such wheat is a 

 "bearded" variety. Between the palet and this 

 outer flowering glume is the ovary, containing the 

 plump ovule, with two plume-like branches of the 

 stigma held above it. On the sides stand the three 

 stamens, that hang out their large anthers on 

 slender filaments when the glumes part for the 

 wind to do its work of carrying pollen from open- 

 ing anthers to waiting stigmas. To some extent, 

 wheat flowers are pollenated within the bud. 

 But the wind does the cross-pollenating, which 

 makes more vigorous, larger grains than self- 

 pollenation. 



