40 ENGLISH COTANTi', 



Sub-Class II.— GLUMIFER^. 



Essential organs of the flower with the perianth absent or repre- 

 sented by minute bristles or scales. Flowers in the axils of solitary 

 or alternate subsearious bracts {glumes or pales). 



ORDER LXXXVIL— CYPERACEiE. 



Annual or perennial herbs with tufted or creeping or soboliferous 

 rhizomes, and 3-angled or cylindrical (more rarely 2- or many-angled) 

 leafy stems, commonly solid, generally unbranched. Leaves alternate, 

 tristichous or distichous, sheathing, with the sheath usually not split, 

 without a free ligule ; lamina usually linear and grasslike, sometimes 

 absent, rarely oblong or lanceolate or ensiforra, with parallel or 

 cancellate venation. Flowers perfect or unisexual, monoecious or 

 j^olygamous, very rarely dioecious, in heads or spikes or small cymes, 

 disposed in corymbose panicles, or in spikes disposed in a raceme ; 

 spikes or compound spike with leaflike or scarious bracts. Glumes 

 solitary or (very rarely) in pairs, imbricated on a common axis, 

 pointing in 2, 3, 4, or more directions; lowest glumes of the in- 

 florescence often empty. Perianth none, or represented by bristles or 

 minute scales. Stamens generally 3, rardy 2 or 1, very rarely 4, 9, 

 or 12 ; filaments filiform; anthers afiixed by the base, erect, 2-celled, 

 introrse. Ovary solitary, 1-celled and 1-ovuled, sometimes inclosed 

 in a scarious flask-shaped covering {perigynium); style simple, or 

 2- or 3- cleft, with 2 or 3 stigmas. Fruit an indehiscent lenticular or 

 3-angled nut, sometimes enclosed in a jaerigynium. Seed with a 

 thin testa; albumen farinaceous or fleshy; embryo minute, enclosed 

 in the base of the albumen. 



Trice L— CYPERE^. 

 Flowers perfect. Glumes of the spikelets distichous. 



GENUS /.— C Y P E R U S. Linn. 



Flowers perfect, arranged in manj'-flowercd spikelets, disposed in an 

 umbellato-corymbose panicle or globular head. Glumes of each spikelet 

 numerous, distichous, keeled, all similar or the lowest ones of each 

 spikelet larger, all beai'ing flowers in their axils or a few of the lower 

 ones empty. Hypogynous bristles or scales none. Stamens 1 to 3. 

 Style deciduous; stigmas 2 or 3. Nut lentictUar wlien there are 2, 

 trianijular when there are 3 stiunias. 



