DESCRIPTIONS OF TRIBES AND GENERA. 187 



amount of gluten, such as is found in the half 

 hard and half soft kinds, is indispensable. 

 Pronounced soft wheats, like the English, 

 especially those grown in a moist climate, need 

 the addition of flour of the hard-fruited races 

 before baking. By themselves alone they are 

 better adapted for starch-making. The espe- 

 cially hard wheats are over-rich in gluten, and 

 the food baked from them is therefore too firm. 

 They are accordingly used for macaroni and 

 for making cracked wheat and mush. The 

 straw is shorter than that of rye ; an especially 

 short and delicate- stalked kind is produced in 

 Tuscany by thick sowing on poor soil, and used 

 for making Florentine hats. 



286. Heteranthelium Hochst. An annual grass, with 

 spikes having many bristles. Empty glumes bristle- 

 like, with hairs arranged like the barbs of a feather. 

 Flowering glumes warty and with awl-shaped awns. 

 Above the two fertile flowers is a pedicel with a tuft of 

 sterile, subulate or awn-like glumes. 



Species one (H. piliferum Hochst.), in the Orient. 



SUB-TRIBE E. Elymeae. 



Spikelets 2-6 on each notch of the rachis, forming a branching system in 

 which one spikelet (the middle one) represents the primary, and the 

 lateral spikelets the secondary and tertiary branches. Rarely the 

 primary branch is aborted and the secondary ones only are present. 

 The terminal spikelet when present has both empty glumes together 

 with the flowering glumes in its median lines. In the lateral spike- 

 lets, on the contrary, they are thrown out of this line and occupy 

 the place that is left to them from the crowding together of the 

 spikelets; that is, they usually stand close together in twos in front 

 of each spikelet, and therefore often apparently decussate with the 

 median line of the spike. Stamens three. 



287. (274) HordeumL. Empty glumes narrow, usually 

 subulate, all together forming a kind of involucre around 

 the spikelet ; flowering glumes in the median line of the 

 rachis (as in Lolium) five-nerved, extending into a strong 

 awn ; grain usually adherent to the glume, hairy at the 

 apex, usually sulcate, without epiblast. 



