130 SUMMER FLOWERS. 



ledons is that of the Graminaceous plants or Grasses, one of 

 the most important to man in the whole range of the vegeta- 

 ble world, as affording the staple food both of himself and the 

 animals subservient to his use. It is a family presenting 

 great variation of structure as well as of aspect, yet combined 

 with certain constant and obvious characteristics which render 

 the plants easily distinguishable from all others though they 

 are by no means so readily distinguished among themselves. 

 Some of these characteristic features are the hollow roundish 

 stems or culms, separated into lengths by somewhat thickened 

 joints or nodes, and the narrow alternate parallel-veined leaves 

 or leaf-blades which sheath the stem by their base, the sheath 

 being split open on the side opposite the blade, and usually 

 terminated just within the base of the blade by a small scarious 

 appendage called a ligule. The flowers are arranged in spike- 

 lets consisting of chaffy scales imbricating over each other, 

 the outer of which are called glumes, and the inner pales. 

 The fruit is a seed-like grain, or caryopsis. 



Of this important race of plants we have an example in the 

 Soft Brome- Grass,* which is one of our commonest species 

 in open waste places. It is an annual or biennial plant, with 

 a culm one to two feet high, everywhere clothed with soft 

 short hairs, and producing an ovate slighly compound flower- 

 ing panicle two to three inches long. The spikelets are ovate, 

 somewhat compressed, pubescent, standing nearly erect ; they 

 are made up of a pair of glumes at the base, the outer of which 

 is considerably the larger of the two, and within these from 

 five to ten florets ranged alternately on either side of the axis 

 of the spikelet, each floret consisting of two pales or palea3, the 

 outer of which is larger, rounded on the back, and having a 

 straight awn or bristle as long as the floret, growing from just 



* Srotnus mo His Plate 22 B. 



