164 Field, Forest, and Wayside Flowers 
Sometimes, as in the oat-blossom, they are large 
enough to shut the whole spikelet in between 
them. 
When we separate the empty glumes of the oat- 
spikelet we find the enclosed flowers (Fig. 40, c). 
Each is shut in between two green scales, which 
are like the ‘‘empty glumes,” but smaller, and 
blossom and scales together look like a green oat- 
grain. 
Scales similar to these enclose the blossoms of 
all typical grasses. They are generally two in num- 
ber, and are sometimes called ‘‘ flowering glumes”’ 
and sometimes ‘‘paleae,” while Gray’s ‘‘ Manual”’ 
calls the lower and outer one the ‘flowering 
glume’”’ and the upper and inner one the palet. 
However designated, they correspond to those 
scale-like leaves which stand beside the florets of 
many-clustered flowers, and are variously named by 
the technical botanist (Fig. 40, @). 
At some fair future day we will have, let us 
hope, the same name for the same organ, what- 
ever the organism in which it occurs. This plan 
will save the nature-student much tribulation, and 
will give him far clearer ideas of relationship and 
development than he can possibly get under the 
present system, 
