28 THE AMERICAN BOTANIST. 
calyx and corolla, and the latter is usually brightly colored, 
indicating- that the flower is pollinated by insects. Each 
flower, however, is commonly subtended by a bract of some 
sort, which may be taken as one indication of their relation- 
ship to the arums. In many forms the stem does not produce 
lengthened intemotes, and this results in the basal rosettes 
seen in the pipewort, the pineapple and in a measure in the 
yellow-eyed grasses. 
Of the pipewort family we have barely half a dozen of 
the five hundred species. A single genus common in South 
America has more than two hundred species. The little 
seven-angled pipewort {Eriocauloyi septangidare) is probably 
our commonest species, being quite noticeable about midsum- 
mer when its tiny, white, button-like flower-heads begin to 
appear along the borders of quiet ponds. These flower-heads 
are fairly typical of the family. Each consists of an outer 
involucre of scale-like bracts surrounding a cluster of flow- 
ers. The outer flowers are likely to be staminate and the 
inner pistillate, but in other species this arrangement may be 
reversed. From the resemblance of the flower-cluster to 
that of the asters, Rendle calls them "the Composites of the 
Monocotyledons." The flower-cluster is often woolly. Al- 
though most abundant in the American tropics, this family 
is spread throughout the world, chiefly in the warmer parts. 
The yellovv-e>'ed grasses, as their name indicates, are 
grass-like in appearance until they come into bloom. Then 
the spherical or oblong heads of overlapping scaly bracts, 
from each of which a yellow flower appears, at once indicates 
the difference. There are usually but one or two flowers in a 
head open at one time, which gives the inflorescence a 
ragged appearance. There are scarcely more than half a 
hundred species of this family, mostly in the tropics. 
Our single representative of the Bromeliaceae is Til- 
landsia imicoides, the plant so conspicuous in the Southern 
