KEY TO THE 



SEED PLANTS OF WESTERN MIDDLE 



CALIFORNIA 



GYMNOSPERM/E. 



Ovules borne naked on a scale; cot\ ledons 3 to 15, sometimes 2; flowei-s 

 monoecious or dioecious; leaves needle-like, scale-like or linear; 

 trees or shrubs, ours evergreen. 

 Flowers solitary; ovule 1 to each cup-shaped disk or fleshy envelope, 



becoming a bony seed TAXACKiE, p. 17. 



Flowers in cone-like aments, the pistillate ament becoming a scaly 

 cone, rarely a beiTv; ovules 2 or more at the base of each scale. 



CoNIFERvE, p. 18. 



ANGIOSPERM^. 



Ovules borne in a closed sac or nvary, which becomes the fruit; 

 cotyledons 1 or 2. 



CLASS t.— MONOCOTYLEDONS. 



Leaves with parallel veins (except Trillium); parts of the flowers 

 usually in 3's, never in 4's or 5's; vascular bundles scattered 

 irregularly through the pithy tissue, not in rings or annual layers; 

 embryo with 1 cotyledon; all oui-s herbs, when perennial mostly 

 with rootstooks or bulbs. 

 A. Flowers without perianth and enveloped by chaffy bracts, or 

 the perianth dry and scarious. 

 Flowers (in purs) sessile, in dense spikelets, with iinbricate bract- 

 lets; spikelets borne in spikes, racemes, panicles or umbels; 

 perianth none or reduced to bristles; fruit an aehene. 

 Stems mostly terete and hollow; leaves in 2 rows; sheaths mostly 

 split open opposite the blade; ligule mostly conspicuous; 

 bractlets 2 subtending each flower, or the upper (the palea) 

 rarely obsolete; anthers mostly versatile; seed (in ours) 

 adnate to the pericarp .... Gramineje, p. 26. 



Stems mostly triangular, solid; leaves in 3 rows; sheaths entire; 

 ligule obsolete or minute; bractlet only 1 subtending each 



flower; anthers erect; seed free from the pericarp 



Cyperacb.*;, p. 88. 



(5) 



