161 



laid in tempestuous weather, are great recommendations to the farmer, 

 m a country where agriculture has little advanced from the earliest 

 periods. 



T. dicoccvm, two-grained, or rice-wheat, and T. monococcum, one- 

 grained wheat, are apparently varieties of the foregoing, and are often 

 cultivated on the same lands. Their produce in grain is comparatively 

 small ; but it has, in either case, qualities that habit has rendered 

 agreeable. ^ The last is a favourite corn among the Swiss, who seem to 

 have a similar predilection for it as our northern country people have 

 for oats and barley. 



Agropyrum. Beauvois. 



Perennial. Spikelets not ventricose, several-flowered. Glumes and 

 paleae lanceolate, or linear-oblong. 



Triticum oristatum. Crested Wheat Grass. Plate CXXIX. 



Spike-flattened, closely imbricated. Spikelets four- or five-flowered. 

 Glumes subulate, with a terminal awn. Outer paleae with an awn 

 about its own length. Rachis slightly downy. Leaves hairy above. 

 Culm rough. 



Triticum cristatum, Schreber. Most English botanists. E. B. 2267. 

 ed. 2. 180. Agropyrum cristatum, Beauvois. Bindley. Bromus 

 cristatus, Linnoeus. 



We have not any national claim to this grass, which, though dis- 

 covered many years ago by the late Mr. G. Don, growing on the east 

 coast of Scotland, " on steep banks and rocks," between Arbroath and 

 Montrose, seems not to have been found by any more recent botanists. 

 Its introduction in the present work is due to an oversight in making 

 out the list of plates from those of the ' English Botany,' in which it was 

 figured from specimens forwarded at the time of its discovery. On the 

 same authority it retains a place in most of our descriptive catalogues 

 and manuals of the British Flora, probably on the plea that having been 

 once met with in this island, accidentally introduced, it may again 

 occur as a natural visitant. 



Cultivated in the botanic garden, the stems average a foot or more 

 in height, being hairy and rough to the touch. Leaves linear-accumi- 

 nate, hairy on the upper surface, with a very short obtuse ligule. 

 Spike compressed, linear, or tending to ovate, seldom more than an 

 inch in length ; spikelets closely imbricated on each side of the rachis, 

 sessile four- to six-flowered. Glumes more or less lanceolate or subu- 

 late, terminating in a long point or awn, which is an extension of their 

 middle vein. Outer palea awned Kke the glumes from the apex ; 

 inner fringed on the margins. 



Perennial. Flowers in July. 



