B£'%gmB OMBB^ -Senior Botanlj^t 
Man like other animals is wholly dependent for his lining on the 
plant kingdoDi, and of all plants the grasses are the most important to 
him* All our bread stuffs, wheats corn, oats^ rje^ harley-j and rice^ as 
well as sugarcane, are grasses. Bamboos are grasses, and so are the 
Kentucky bluegrass and creeping bent of our lawns, the timothy and redtop 
'] • ■ • 
of our meadows* If such different looking plants as bamboo, corn, and 
timothy are all grasses, what is it that characterizes a grass? It is 
the stmcture of the plant • All grasses have stems with solid joints 
and ranked leaves, one at each joint, the leaves consisting of two 
parts, the sheath, fitting around the stan like a split tube, and the 
blade, conmionly long and,, narrow. No other plant family has just this 
structure. Clover and alfalfa, built on a very different plan, are not 
grasses. 
Grasses have a wider range than any other plant femily, occupyir^ 
all parts of the earth and exceeding any other in the number of individ- 
uals. They reach the limits of vegetation in the polar regions and on 
mountain tops, endure both cold and torrid desert coriditions, form the 
main part of the vegetation of vast prairies, plains, savannas, and steppes, 
of both hemispheres, and occupy great stretches of marsh and tide flat s • 
Bamboos, the largest of grasses, form extensive fore sts and dense jungles. 
