GRAMINE.<R. 



971 



the outer empty ones lanceolate and tapering to a point ; the flower- 

 ing ones smaller, 2- cleft at the top, each lobe tapering into a point, with 

 a long, twisted, and bent awn on the back of the glume. The terminal 

 glume of the spikelet often small and empty or rudimentary. Axis of 

 the spikelet hairy under the flowering glumes. 



A considerable genus, widely spread over the temperate and colder 

 regions of both hemispheres, or in the higher mountains within the 

 tropics. 



Annual. Spikelets hanging, 8 to 10 lines long . . . . 1. Wild O. 

 Perennial. Spikelets erect or spreading. 



Spikelets about 6 lines long 2. Perennial 0. 



Spikelets about 3 lines long 3. Yellow 0. 



1. Wild Oat. Avena fatua, Linn. (Fig. 1179.) 

 (Eng. Bot. t. 2221.) 



An erect glabrous annual, 2 to 3 feet 

 high, with a loose panicle of large spike- 

 lets, hanging from filiform pedicels of 

 unequal length, arranged in alternate 

 bunches along the main axis. Outer 

 glumes nearly f inch long, pale-green or 

 purplish, tapering to a thin, scarious 

 point. Flowering glumes 2 or 3, scarcely 

 so long as the outer ones, of a firm tex- 

 ture at the base, and covered outside 

 with long, brown hairs, thin and cleft at 

 the top, each lobe tapering into a short 

 point. Awn fully twice as long as the 

 spikelet, twisted at the base, abruptly 

 bent about the middle. 



A common weed of cultivation in all 

 corn countries, and generally confined to 

 cornfields, so that its origin is as yet 

 doubtful, but probably a native of the 

 east Mediterranean region. Abundant 

 in Britain. Fl. with the corn, A va- 

 riety with the flowering glumes larger 



and more like the outer ones, hairy only below the middle, and termi- 

 nating in 2 almost awn-like points, has been distinguished under the 

 name of A. strigosa (Eng. Bot. t. 1266), and it is said that the cultivated 

 Oat is but a variety of the same species, readily degenerating into the 

 wild form. 



Fig. 1179. 



