CHAPTER FOURTEENTH. 



THE GRAMINE&. 



EXERCISE LXXI. 

 Characters of the Gramineae. 



THERE is a large group of plants blossoming in pe- 

 culiar-looking spikes, heads, and panicles, the flowers of 

 which are furnished with green or brown scales, called 

 glumes, whence the entire group is known as the Gluma- 

 ceae. They constitute a twelfth part of the described spe- 

 cies of flowering plants, and at least nine tenths of the indi- 

 viduals composing the vegetation of the world. They grow 

 everywhere. All grasses and all the cultivated crops of 

 grain belong among them, besides many other plants not so 

 important to man.- They have true flowers, but no calyx 

 or corolla. The Glumaceae are* divided into two groups ; 

 one group the sedges having solid stems, while the 

 other the grasses has hollow stems. The flowers of 

 both these groups have a special structure, which your 

 previous study will not enable you to understand. 



From this large class we will select examples that be- 

 long to the family of grasses or Gramine?e, the members 

 of which have hollow stems, and the sheaths of their ligu- 

 late leaves are split in front. 



Gather specimens of wheat, if possible, in blossoming- 

 time, when the stamens are to be seen (Fig. 459). Along 

 the rachis are rows of peculiar-looking bundles. The 

 number of these rows varies in different kinds of wheat. 



