THE GRASSES (GRAMINEOE). 



Probably the grasses are the most useful plants in the 

 world. It may be that more than half the individual plants 

 in the world are grasses. It is a great family of more 

 than 3,500 species, embracing species that are so tiny 

 that they hardly reach an inch in height, and the giant 

 bamboos of the tropics that sometimes grow to be 100' 

 or more. Corn is a giant grass ; and wheat, rye, oats, 

 barley, rice and sugar cane, all are grasses. Then there 

 are millets, sorghum, Kaffir -corn, broom corn all 

 grasses. Some few plants we call grasses are not true 

 grasses ; the sedges are of a lower order of plants. Broom 

 sedge is not a grass. 



One can know a grass usually by its round often hol- 

 low stem, its long, narrow leaf with usually parallel 

 veins and its manner of growth, not from buds at 

 the terminus of the- part, but by leaf and stem being 

 pushed up from beneath. All grass stems are jointed ; 

 the nodes are bulging and usually solid. The leaves clasp 

 the stems in enveloping sheaths. 



Most grasses, especially the perennials, have creeping 

 underground stems or root-stocks. These make new stems 

 to spring up around the parent stem and thus perennial 

 grasses usually thicken themselves rapidly. Some an- 

 nual grasses do this and some do not ; nearly all grasses 

 "stool" or increase by sending up many stems from one 

 root. Wheat may send up 40 or more stems from one 

 seed if the soil is rich; corn will sucker, sending up sev- 



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