66o 



FARM ' SEEDS ' : SPECIAL 



fruits, like wheat. In samples of some kinds of grass seeds, such 

 as Timothy, with very thin, loose glumes, naked fruits may occa- 

 sionally be present in considerable numbers. The only part of 

 any use is the properly ripened fruit In immature samples, and 

 those which have been badly handled, and the true fruit shaken 

 out and lost, the farmer buys nothing more than useless chaff. 

 As the only parts to be seen are the chaffy glumes, the appear- 

 ance of a sample can be of little service in guiding us in the 

 purchase of good seed, and the necessity of studying the weight 

 per bushel, and buying by weight rather than by bushel without 

 reference to weight, cannot be too much insisted upon if reliable 

 results are required. Light samples invariably have a large pro- 

 portion of empty chaff in them. 



A useful way of determining how much of a sample is merely 

 chaff is to place a number of the seeds between two sheets of 



glass and hold them up to the light : 

 the grains, if present, can then be 

 seen within the semi - transparent 

 glumes, and the percentage of 

 ' deaf-seeds ' readily counted. 

 .Spikelet ^^^ flowers or fruits of the 





Fig. 207 Spikelet of a „ 



showing its various parts, and usual 

 manner of separation when rips. 



grasses are enclosed, as stated 

 above, between the flowering 

 glume and pale, and these com- 

 pound structures are arranged in 

 two rows on the side of a short stalk 

 or axis, called the rachilla, the whole 

 forming a small spike of flowers or 

 fruits. 



At the base of each spikelet are 

 usually two empty glumes, which enclose more or less completely 

 the rest of the spikelet. 



^^■hen the grasses are thrashed for their ' seeds,' those spikelets, 

 which consist of several flowers, generally break up, as indicated 



