

[Extract from Quarterly Report Kansas State Board of Agriculture, March, 1889.] 



THE NATIVE GRASSES OF KANSAS. 



COMPILED BY W. A. KELLERMAN, Ph.D., 

 Professor of Botany, State Agricultural College. 



I. Intboductoey. 



The grasses are included in one large family or order called Gbamine^e. No plant 

 is properly called a grass which is a member of any other family, though the com- 

 mon name may be "Knot-grass," "Rib-grass," "Sea-grass," etc. The number of 

 species has been estimated at about six thousand, but the best agrostologists now re- 

 duce the number of well-defined species to perhaps three thousand five hundred. 



Grasses are found in abundance in the tropics — exceeded there by only one other 

 family, namely, Leguminosae, or Pea Family. They are second in size also in the 

 temperate zones — here exceeded by the Composite, or Sunflower Family. But in 

 the arctic regions the grasses outnumber all the other families of plants. 



The economic importance of the family is perhaps second to none — as will read- 

 ily be believed upon enumeration of such members as Wheat, Rye, Oats, Indian Corn, 

 forage grasses, etc. 



Grasses are not likely to be confused with members of any other family, unless 

 it be Sedges; but they are easily separated upon careful inspection. The stems of 

 grasses are hollow (except in a few cases, as Indian Corn) and round, whereas the 

 Sedge stem is solid, and more or less three-cornered. The leaves of grasses are ar- 

 ranged in two vertical rows or planes — of Sedges, in three such planes. The sheath 

 of the grass-leaf is split down the entire length, but in the sedge-leaf the two edges 

 are united for some distance above the joint; there are a few exceptions, but the 

 statements are true for all Kansas Grasses. The flower-cluster of the Sedge is a more 

 or less dense spike; that of a Grass may be a spike, but in the great majority of 

 cases it is a more open and branched cluster. The flowers of the two families are 

 also different, but these are more difficult to understand. 



In order to identify grasses satisfactorily their more obvious characters must 

 --*. be carefully examined, and these will therefore be here briefly passed in review, and 

 the technical terms necessarily used in describing the various kinds explained. 



The Root. — Grasses have in most cases very many slender fibrous roots. They 

 are especially abundant, long and spreading in the annual species. They are some- 

 times found also at the lower nodes of the stem piercing the leaf-sheath. The 

 slender under-ground runners possessed by many perennial species, though often 

 somewhat root-like in appearance have nevertheless nodes (joints), minute scales, 

 which are modified leaves, and buds; these characters identify them as branches; they 

 ■Jare the so-called root-stocks. 



The Stem. — The upright, (usually) hollow, jointed stem is universally designated 



by the word culm, and needs no farther characterization. The under-ground, creep- 



_ ing stems are the root-stocks, or rhizomes. The axis or stem which supports the 



flowers of a spikelet and the common axis of a close spike or panicle, is called the 



rachis. / 



The Leaf. — The leaf consists of three parts, namely, a blade, a sheath and a 

 small erect outgrowth at the juncture of the two, called the ligule. The leaf is 



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