154 Flowers and their Pedigrees. 



more important, as indicating an approach , to the 

 essentially one-seeded grass tribe, they have only 

 three seeds in the flower, one to each cell of the 

 capsule. These seeds are comparatively large, and 

 are richly stored with food-stuffs for the supply of the 

 young plantlet. One such richly supplied embryo 

 is worth many little unsupported grains, since it 

 stands a much better chance than they do of surviv- 



FiG. 3S. — Single flower of Woodnish. 



ing in the struggle for existence. The wood-rushes 

 may thus be regarded as some of the earliest plants 

 among the great trinary class to adopt those tactics 

 of storing gluten, starch, and other food-stuffs along 

 with the embrj'o, which have given the cereals their 

 acknowledged superiority as producers of human food. 

 They are closely connected with the rushes, on the 

 one hand, by sundry intermediate species which 

 possess thin leaves instead of cylindrical pithy blades ; 



