20 
ENGLISH BOTANY. 
to 1 foot long by | to 1 inch broad, with a short membranous ligule. 
Panicle 4 to 7 inches long, open at the time of flowering, afterwards 
contracted, the longest branches about 2 inches long, bare of spikelets 
for about k inch, the uppermost branches with spikelets nearly to the 
base. Spikelets about ^ inch long, green, or tinged with reddish- 
purple. Lowest glumes 3-ribbed, gradually acuminated. Pales a little 
shorter than the glumes, glabrous, shining, ciliated, with 2 pilose 
scalelike barren florets at the base, about half the length of the pales. 
A variety mth the leaves striped with white is common in gardens 
under the name of " Ribbon Grass," or " Gardener's Garters." 
Ribbon Grass. 
German, Glanzgras. French, Baldingere coloree. 
This grass is generally distributed in sluggish rivers, pond sides, and marshy 
places, in all of which the sportsman welcomes it as a covert for water- fowl. 
The Variegated Eibhon or Sti-iped Grass of our gardens is a variety of a more 
dwarf liiibit and less tendency — hke all albino-foliaged plants — to flower. A still 
more dwai-f tixfted variety, even less disposed to flower, is for these qualities much 
employed in modem ribbon borders. 
GENUS XL— p H A L A HI S. Linn. 
Spikelets persistent or deciduous, subsessile, arranged in a veiy dense 
ovoid or .subcylindrical .^pikelikc panicle, laterally compressed, closed 
during flowering, each containing a single perfect floret, with the 
minute scalelike rudiments of 2 neuter florets beneath it, or sometimes 
of only 1. Glumes 2. cMpial, longer than the floret, with a strong keel 
bearing a wing, which is most developed beyond the middle, each with 
2 ribs in addition to the keel, apiculate or mucronate, parcfmientliko. 
I'ales of the I t-rfoct floret 2, faintly keeled, pointed, but not awned; 
the lower one ultimately eartilagirious and a litrle larger than the 
Stamens 3. Styles 2. very long; stigmas long-, thick, plumo^^e, pro- 
rriuled at the apux of the floret. Caryt>}»s glabrous, free, elliptical- 
'l:>ng, laterally compreft>>ed, not channelled. 
: -'iii iti5 white fthiaLi.g st-ud; bupposed to be tb« q)a,\<.ailc of Dii-c-jrideh. 
SPLCIES I.—PH ALARIS CANARIENSIS. A... 
....Led from the ba-^e. 
