Mr. Woods oji the Genei'a of European Grasses. 47 



7. Hordeum. Spiculee in threes, 1-flowered, with the stalk-like rudiment of 

 a second floret towards the common rachis. 



The species of Brachvpodium have been alternately united with Bromus and 

 Festuca. Kunth joins them to Triticum, and I confess I find more difficulty 

 in drawing up a character which shall distinguish them from that genus than 

 from either of the others. The spiculse are not more stalked than they are 

 in the division Micropyrum, nor perhaps than in Triticum caninum ; and in 

 T. Nardus the glumes are nearly as unequal as in Brachypodium. 



"Spiculse rachi contrariae," "Calyx racheos scrobiculse parallelus," "Spi- 

 culae rachi parallelee," are the terms used by different botanists to express the 

 peculiar position of the spiculse of Lolium. Smith's calyx of one valve oppo- 

 site to the rachis is less obscure, but seems hardly sufficient to indicate the 

 position of the spicula itself. 



Triticum, as it stands now, is a difficult genus to characterise. Smith says, 

 " Calyx of two transverse opposite valves, solitary, many-flowered :" this would 

 certainly include Brachypodium, and was probably intended to comprehend 

 T. loliaceum and T. maritimum. There is nothing also to exclude several 

 other plants whose flowers are sessile on a one-sided or two-sided rachis. The 

 word transverse is probably introduced to distinguish it from Lolium, but does 

 not well explain the position of the spiculse. In the longer description of the 

 genus he says, " spikelets lateral, contrary to the main stalk." Kunth, on the 

 other hand, says, " spiculse rachi communi parallelse." Smith adds, that the 

 outer palea is keeled or furrowed ; but this is not true of T. durum, nor can it 

 be well said of T. repens, where neither keel nor furrow is carried down to the 

 base, nor are there either keels or furrows to the division Micropyrum. He 

 assigns to it a loose seed, but the seed is said to be attached in T. Spelta, 

 T. monococcum, T. dicoccum, and I find it to be so also in T. Poa. In 

 T. Nardus the valves are unequal ; and without the character of equal valves, 

 which obtains through most of the genus, we seem to have no distinction 

 from Brachypodium. The habit would make me wish to keep distinct the 

 four genera Brachypodium, Agropyrum, Micropyrum, and Triticum ; but I 

 have laboured in vain to find characters on which they might be divided. 

 The seed is crested in the cultivated wheats, but not, I believe, in any species 

 of the divisions Agropyrum and Micropyrum. 



