The Origin of Wheat. 159 



alisma-likc progenitors. In many species, however, 

 even this last souvenir of the trinary type has been 

 utterly obliterated, the ovary having only two 

 stigmas, and assuming a flattened two-sided shape. 

 In all the carices, the flowers are loosely arranged 

 in compact spikes and spikelets, with their mobile 

 stamens hanging out freely to the breeze, and their 

 feathery stigmas prepared to catch the slightest grain 

 of pollen which ma)' happen to be wafted their way 

 by any passing breath of air. The varieties in their 

 arrangement, however, are almost as infinite amone 

 the different species as those of the grasses them- 

 selves ; sometimes the male and female flowers are 

 produced on separate plants ; sometimes they grow 

 in separate spikes on the same plant ; sometimes the 

 same spike has male flowers at the top and female at 

 the bottom ; sometimes the various flowers are mixed 

 up with one another at top and bottom in a regular 

 hotch-potch of higgledy-piggledy confusion. But all 

 the sedges alike are very grass-like in their aspect, 

 with thin blades by wa}- of leaves, and blossoms on 

 tall heads as in the grasses. In fact, the two families 

 are never accurately distinguished by any except 

 technical botanists ; to the ordinary observer, they 

 are all grasses together, without petty distinctions of 

 genus and species. Like the grasses, too, the sedges 



