Banibitsa.'] gramine^. 435 



Panicle large, with numerous clustered branches, and usually spinous at the 

 nodes. Spikelets solitary or 2 or 3 together, about 1 in. long, sessile, or on 

 short pedicels covered with alternate glume-like bracts. Flowers 4 to 8, 

 almost all male in the spikelets examined. Flowering glumes 4 or 5 lines 

 long, narrow, very pointed. Style semi-bifid. 



Hongkong, Ilance. Also near Canton and dispersed over various parts of India. The 

 Chinese specimens I have seen are very imperfect. 



47. SCHIZOSTACHYUM, Nees. 



Habit of Bambusa. Spikelets 1 -flowered, in distant irregidar clusters, ar- 

 ranged in interrupted spikes which are often clustered, with imbricate glume- 

 like bracts at the base of each cluster. Glumes 2, 3, or more ; the outer ones 

 short ; the inner ones longer, more pointed, and convolute ; the uppermost 

 one alone flowering. Palea none. Stamens 6. Style 3-lobed. 



A small tropical Asiatic genus with perhaps one Brazilian species. 



1. S. dumetorum, Munro in Seem. Bot. Her. 424. Stems 4 to 6 ft. 

 high or more. Leaves lanceolate, scabrous, very pointed, ^ to 1 in. broad, 

 on very short petioles. Flowering spikes simple and terminal or clustered, 

 3 to 6 in. long. Spikelets ^ to f in. long, slender, terete, and veiy pointed, 

 either sessile or on short branching pedicels enveloped in glume-like bracts. 

 Flowering glume usually full \ in. long and very pointed, closely rolled round 

 the stamens and ovary. Outer glumes several, gradually shorter and less 

 pointed. Style nearly as long as the glume, triangidar, with 3 short stigma- 

 tic lobes. — Bambusa dumetorum, Hance in Walp. Ann. iii. 781. 



In hedges and woods, Hmice ; in a i-avine of Mount Davis, Wilford. Not known from 

 elsewhere. 



Class III. CEYPTOGAMS. 



No real flowers, that is, neither stamens, nor pistils, nor true seeds ; the 

 fructification consisting of minute, often highly microscopic granules called 

 spores, variously enclosed in small, often minute or microscopic capsules or 

 spore-cases, wdiich are either sessile or stalked, solitary or crowded in masses, 

 superficial or imbedded in the substance of the plant. 



The few Hongkong Cryptogams included in the present volume have all of them roots 

 and stems or rootstocks very similar in structure to some of the Monocotyledons, and some 

 have leaves nearly the same or reduced to small scales, hut in others they are replaced by 

 foliaceous expansions of the fruiting branches, bearing the fi'uctification on their surface or 

 edges. These foliaceous branches are distinguished by the name oi fronds. In the remain- 

 ing Orders of Cryptogams, called Cellular, there is no distinct stem, or the stem docs not 

 contain any fibres or vascular tissue. They are comprised in the five Orders : Masci, 

 HejmilccP, Lichenes, Fungi, and Alga. They have as yet been little attended to by the ex- 

 plorers of the island of Hongkong, and are altogether beyond the scope of the present Flora. 



CXXIV. LYCOPODIACE.E. Capsulcs in the axils of leaves or of small scale-like bracts. 

 CXXV. FiLiCKS. Spore-cases clustered on the backs or margins of fronds, either simi- 

 lar to the barren ones or contracted and spike-like. 



2 F 2 



