FLORA OF BRITISH INDIA. 



ORDER CLXXUI. 



ERECT decumbent or creeping berbs, or in Tribe Bambitsete shrubs or 

 tr^es. Stem terete or compressed, jointed; internodes solid or hollow. 

 Leaves simple, usually long and narrow, entire, parallel-nerved, with a 

 sheathing base distinct from the blade; sheath split to the base (very 

 rarely entire) with often a transverse hyaline erect appendage (ligula) at 

 the union with the blade, facing the latter. Inflorescence terminal, rarely 

 also from the upper sheaths, consisting of spicate racemed capitate or 

 panicled spikelets. Spikelets of three or more alternate distichous bracts 

 (glumes] , of which the two lowest are normally empty, and the succeeding, 

 if more than one, are arranged on an axis (rachilla), and are all or some 

 of them flowering ; within eacu flowering glume and opposite to it is an 

 erect narrow 2-nerved scale (palea), the margins of which are infolded 

 towards the glume and enclose at the base the true flower. Flotver.? 

 nni- or bisexual, consisting of 2, rarelv 3 or 6 microscopic scales (lodicules) 

 representing a perianth, and stamens or a pistil, or both. Stamens 3, 

 rarely 1,2, 6, or very rarely many, hypogynous ; filaments capillary ; anthers 

 versatile, fugacious, of two parallel cells, with no apparent connective; 

 pollen globose. Ovary entire, 1-celled ; styles 2, rarely 3, free or united at 

 the base, usually elongate, and exserted from the sides or top of the spike- 

 lets, clothed with simple or branched stigmatic hairs; ovule erect, ana- 

 tropous. Fruit a seed -like utricle (grain} free within the fig. glume and 

 palea, or adherent to either or both ; pericarp very thin, rarely thick or 

 separable from the seed. Seed erect; albumen copious, mealy; embryo 

 minute, at the base of and outside the albumen ; cotyledon scutelliform, 

 bearing on its face an erect conical plumule, and descending conical 

 radicle. 



Genera about- 300; species estimated at about 3030, but many are doubtful, and 

 more mere varieties; natives of all climates and regions. 



In working up the grasses for tliis Flora, 1 find the multiplication of species 

 to have passed all bounds, and their nomenclature to be involved in a corresponding 

 degree. This has arisen from two principal causes from authors not taking into 

 account the wide area over which the individual species of grasses range,* and from 

 the imperfection of the descriptions of the earlier and many later authors. It is 

 sixty-two years since Kunth published his " Agrostographia Synoptica (Tubingen, 

 1833), which is an uncritical sweeping up of all previously known supposed genera and 

 species, with imperfect descriptions and synonyms. It was succeeded (in 1835) by a 

 second volume, in which a few hundred species of the first volume are very fully and 

 accurately described, and valuable notes upon others are added. In 1855 Steudel's 

 "Synopsis Graminum " appeared. It in no respect advances, and in many ways 

 retards the student of the Order. Of more recent works on Graminece, three only 

 are of great mark, namely, Munro's very able Monograph of the Bambusece (Trans. 

 Linn. Soc. vol. xxvi. (1868) ; Bentham's revision of the genera, Gen. Plant, vol. iii. 



* It is a fact familiar to every one who examines collections of plants from 

 hitherto unexplored countries, that novelties amongst the grasses are very few indeed, 

 compared with what occurs in other natural families. 



VOL. VII. B 



