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GRAMINACEOUS PLANTS. 293 
inner glumes, their simple unilocular anthers, their glumaceous 
flowers, and their membranous sheath between the glumes and the 
ovary. They are natives of the woods and marshes of New Hol- 
land and South Africa. 
The Errocautace® are perennial marsh plants with cellular 
spongy leaves sheathing at the base, very minute capitate and 
bracteate flowers. Glumes two, and unilateral, a membranous tube, 
anthers two-celled, and in the Xyrids a perfect corolla, connect- 
ing them with the higher organised Endogens. They are 
chiefly aquatic, two-thirds of them natives of tropical America, a 
‘sixth are Australian, and the remainder North American. One 
Species is found in the Island of Skye. 
assing over many Endogens of secondary interest, the several 
orders of which are enumerated in the brief summary we have 
given of them, we reach the Palms, the culminating point of 
vegetative power in Endogens. 
The Parmacex are for the most part trees of gigantic growth, 
always forming wood and occasionally reaching dimensions alto- 
gether unknown among other plants. The Calami or Rotans, for 
instance, according to Humphries, are sometimes 1,200, and even 
1,800 feet long, rising to the tops of the highest trees and falling 
‘gain. The Palms occupy their place in the first ranks of vegetation 
48 much by the majestic beauty and elegance of their appearance, as 
for their services to the inhabitants of the tropics, to whom they 
mish at once bread, oil, and wine. Let us examine the Date 
P alm. as a type of this vegetable group. 
This beautiful tree (represented in Fig. 353), which has 
deservedly received the name of the Prince of Vegetables, raises 
ey straight and column-like stem from eighty to ninety feet. It 
'S crowned by an ample tuft of from forty to fifty leaves, which 
a ‘ometimes attain the length of ten or twelve feet, floating from the 
Oe side 
= 
and 
Summit in rigid, linear, lanceolate, sword-shaped folioles, each 
2 ‘ranged like the fringes of a feather. From the axils of the 
Ves issue coriaceous spathes of a single piece, which opens on 
s and permits the passage of long branchy panicles, which 
timately bear small flowers, which are generally male on one tree 
m* female on another, for it is to be noted that the Date Palms 
