200 PLANT-LIFE 



with sheathing leaves, bearing insignificant flowers 

 without coloured perianths and pollinated by wind 

 agency. 



The Gramineae, or Grasses, include annual and peren- 

 nial species. The latter possess creeping rhizomes 

 i.e.j underground stems of rootlike appearance. The 

 majority of the perennials produce new stems and 

 leaves each season, and these die down at the season's 

 end. The stem of a grass is cylindrical, and, with the 

 exception of Maize and Sugar-Cane, hollow, with solid, 

 swollen joints or nodes; the leaves have a basal portion 

 which sheathes the stem, and an unsegmented, parallel- 

 veined, linear blade. A small scale, the ligule, some- 

 times taking the form of hairs, is situated at the junction 

 of the blade and the sheath. The small flowers are 

 arrayed in spikelets, which, in their turn, enter into the 

 composition of inflorescences of various kinds, according 

 to species. It is usual for each spikelet to embrace 

 several flowers. The spikelet has at its base, in most 

 cases, a pair of barren, chaffy bracts (glumes); but in 

 various species these glumes number from one to three 

 or four. Each flower in the spikelet occurs in a sheathing 

 scale, the palea, while subtending the flower, and outside 

 the palea is the flowering glume, which is frequently 

 awned i.e., furnished with a bristle that bears a num- 

 ber of small, stiff hairs directed backwards. There is 

 no true perianth, but in many instances it is replaced 

 by two very small scales, the lodicules, found above the 

 palea, between it and the flower proper. In brief, each 

 flower of a spikelet occurs within a palea and a flowering 

 glume, and the spikelet itself is enclosed by protective 

 outer glumes, usually two in number. As to the essen- 





