162 Field, Forest, and Wayside Flowers 
tween the oat-blossom and the grain ready for 
the harvest. The flower-cluster is green. The 
ripe oat-cluster or ‘‘fruit’’ is yellow. The non- 
botanist would find no other distinction between 
flower and fruit. Indeed, he probably would not 
recognize the flower as a flower nor the ‘‘ fruit” 
as a fruit. 
What looks like one grain in the oat-cluster is 
—little as one might think so—two flowers, and 
between them there is generally a little white af- 
fair, which is the last vestige of a third (Fig. 
40, @). 
The whole trio constitute a ‘‘spikelet.”” Most 
grass-flowers grow thus in spikelets, which are lit- 
tle floral households. 
Outside the oat-spikelet there are two chaffy 
pointed green scales. 
’ 
These are the ‘‘outer” or ‘‘empty” glumes. 
They correspond to the involucre, or circle of lit- 
tle green scales which surrounds the whole head 
of bloom in many clustered flowers (Fig. 40, 4). 
All grass spikelets are thus partly or wholly en- 
closed in one or two, or sometimes more than two 
empty glumes. Sometimes they are so small that 
Nature seems in fair way to abolish them alto- 
gether, 
