154 Flowers and their Pedigrees. 



more important, as indicating an approach to the 

 essentially one-seeded grass tribe, they have only 

 three seeds in the flower, one to each cell of the 

 capsule. These seeds are comparatively large, and 

 are richly stored with food-stulTs for the supply of the 

 young plantlet. One such richly supplied embryo 

 is worth many little unsupported grains, since it 

 stands a much better chance than they do of surviv- 



FiG. 35. — Single flower of Woodrush. 



ing in the struggle for existence. The wood-rushes 

 may thus be regarded as some of the earliest plants 

 among the great trinary class to adopt those tactics 

 of storing gluten, starch, and other food-stuffs along 

 with the embr}'o, which have given the cereals their 

 acknowledged superiority as producers of human food. 

 They are closely connected w ith the rushes, on the 

 one hand, by sundry intermediate species which 

 possess thin leaves instead of cylindrical pithy blades ; 



