FLOWER i 
variably characterized by imperfect awns which can hardly be 
considered more than mucros. The two-nerved palea is peculiar 
to grasses, as distinguished from the other glumaceous orders, and 
is never absent, unless we except the tribe Oryzee and Phalaridea, 
which have a one- instead-of a two-nerved scale in the axil of the 
flowering glume. 
We, have now to describe the flower (fig. 9). As already re- 
marked, neither glumes nor palea constitute what are botanically 
known as the floral envelopes. The perianth of the grass-flower is 
very rudimentary indeed ; it consists of two or three colourless 
scales (lodicules) which are so exceed- 
ingly minute that they can hardly 
be detected with the naked eye, and, 
unlike the perianth of most other 
flowering plants, they are of very little 
service to us in the classification of 
the Order, the Bambusee excepted. 
Hence the various modifications of the 
glumes have all the more importance. yy. 9A. erasefower (Pea) 
The lodicules are hypogynous (z.¢. showing globular ovary with 2 
situated beneath the ovary), and may  odicules at its base, 3 stamens, 
be entire or bifid, or fringed at the thagnifed, es OTEY 
edges. The stamens, also hypogynous, 
are usually three in number; they have a Jong filament and a 
large, linear or oblong anther, which is notched at the ends, as 
the two lobes do not cohere throughout; it is pendulous and 
attached at the back (dorsifixed) to its filament by a joint, so that 
it is versatile, swinging as on a pivot. The pistil consists of a 
very minute more or less globular ovary, 
surmounted by two styles, each branching 
into a comparatively large feathery stigma. 
The ovary, although formed of two car- k 
pellary leaves (indicated by the two styles ¢ 
and stigmas), is one-celled, ze. with a 
single cavity, and contains only one ovule, 
which is basal and erect, or nearly so, but em 
inverted (anatropous) upon its stalk or \ 
raphe (fig. 10). ; ai 
The symmetry of the grass-flower is ii 
rather obscure. Theoretically, the grass- Rom 
flower is made up of ternate whorls, ze. f 
each whorl or circle of floral organs con- yg. 19,—Inverted ovule: 
sists of three members or a multiple of that /funicle; x raphe; az and # 
number, these members alternating one pia akon aed Bete 
with another in the different whorls. O embryo-sac. *Much magnified. 
the four series of organs which constitute a 
typical flower—calyx, corolla, stamens (andreecium), and _pistil 
(gynzcium)—the first is always absent in grasses, and the other 
whorls are often incomplete. The common type of grass-flower is 
shown diagrammatically in fig. 11 B. It has only three whorls ; 
2 
