104. 



1-celled, with 1 erect -anatropous ovule. Styles 2 or rarely 3, free or 

 united at the base into a 2 or 3-branehed style, the upper stigmatic 

 portion or. stigmas usually long, either feathery with simple or branched 

 stigmatic hairs, or more rarely simple with the stigmatic hairs very 

 short or reduced to scarcely prominent papillae. Fruit a small seed-like 

 nut or utricle, often enclosed iu the palea and subtendiflg glume, the 

 thin "membranous pericarp usually closely adnate to the seed and 

 inseparable from it, sometimes adnate also to the enclosing palea, in a 

 few genera free and loosely surrounding the seed. Seed erect, 

 albuminous, with a thin adnate testa. Embryo small, usually globular 

 or nearly so, on one side of the base of the albumen. Kerbs, usually 

 tufted or decumbent or creeping and rooting at the base, sometimes 

 tall and branching, shrubby or arborescent. Stems usually hollow 

 between the nodes. Leaves alternate, entire, parallel-veined, usually 

 long and narrow, sheathing the stem at their base, but the sheaths 

 split open from the base opposite the blade and often ending within 

 the blade in a scauious or ciliate appendage called a ligula. 

 Inflorescence terminal, rarely also from the sheaths of the upper 

 leaves, the spikelets variously arranged in spikes, racemes, panicles, or 

 heads. Bracts occasionally but rarely subtending the branches of the 

 panicle or single spikelets. 



Sbeies a. PANICACE^. 

 Spikelets articulate with the pedicel below the glumes, with a 

 single terminal fertile flower, in addition to which there is sometimes 

 a male or sterile flower below it. 



Mr. Bentham says : — "This first main division of Graminese is very fairly defined 

 by the combination of two characters — the articulation of the pedicel below the 

 spikelet pr cluster of spikelets, and the single fertile flower apparently terminal, with 

 or without a single male or sterile one below it. Where either of these two characters 

 faUs, the plant should be referred to Poaoese." 



Tribe 1. PAwiCEiE. — Spikelets hermaphrodite, more rarely by 

 abortion unisexual, spicate or paniculate, rhachis of the inflorescence 

 not articulate. Glumes, flowering exaristate, fruiting indurated or at. 

 any rate more rigid than the exterior ones. Examples : Paspalim, 

 (see "Ditch Millet"), Panicum (see "Summer-grass"), Genclrus 

 (see " Scrub or Hillside Burr-grass"). 



Tribe 2. MATi)E.a). — Spikelets unisexual, the terminal ones 

 male, spicate or paniculate or (in Pariana, not Australian) sur- 

 rounding the female, lower ones female spicate, separating joint by 

 joint with the internode of the rhachis (except in Zea). Examples: 

 Goix (see " Job's Tears ") and Zea (the Maize.) 



Tribe 3. OfiTZEiE, — Spikelets hermaphrodite or more rarely 

 unisexual, paniculate or spicate ; rhachis of the inflorescence not 

 articulate ; glumes, the uppermost beneath the flower (palea ?), 1-nerved 

 or carinate. Examples: Oryza (see "Eice"), and Leersia, the 

 Eice-grass. 



Tribe 4. TeistegineJ!!. — Spikelets hermaphrodite, placed 

 singly along the inarticulate branches of the panicle, or more rarely 

 in pairs or fascicles, articulate with pedicel. G-lumes, empty aristate 

 or muticus, flowering hyaline or finely membranous, terminated by a 

 geniculate arista or muticus. Example : See Arundinella, a very 

 common coarse grass met with on hillsides in Queensland. 



