49° 
The Ohio Naturalist. 
[Vol. XII, No. 5,. 
A REVISED TAXONOMY OF THE GRASSES. 1 
John H. Schaffner. 
Having had occasion to study the grass flora of Ohio in connec- 
tion with the preparation of a forthcoming catalog of Ohio plants 
and having paid considerable attention to the phyletic arrange- 
ment of the flowering plants, it soon became evident to the writer 
that the usual arrangement, as given in recent systematic works, 
reverses the order of nature and the rational method of presenta- 
tion. To begin the grass series with plants having such specialized 
structures as one finds in Zea, Coix, and Tripsacum, is to intimate 
that the grasses have been evolving from the specialized to the 
unspecialized, from the unique to the normal, from the particular 
to the general. 
If one makes a general study of the spikelet and flower, the 
order of progress is indicated in a remarkably clear manner by a 
long series of degenerations and vestigial parts. The evidence 
is incontrovertable to anyone who can entertain any modern 
views on the doctrine of evolution as applied to these plants. The 
conclusion seems inevitable — the bamboos and arundinarias are 
the most primitive grasses while gama-grass, Job’s-tears, and 
Indian corn are among the most extreme specializations to be 
found not alone in the Graininaceae but even in the whole group of 
flowering plants. 
In order to present the arrangement clearly to students of 
systematic botany, a brief description of the terminology, with a 
synopsis of the tribes usually recognized and a systematic list of 
the local genera, is given below. 
TERMINOLOGY OF THE GRASS INFLORESCENCE 
The inflorescence of a grass is made up of compact flower- 
bearing branchlets known as spikelets. In general, the spikelet 
of a grass is of the same importance in identification as the flower 
in most other groups. The spikelet usually has two bracts at the 
base which are called the empty glumes. These may be disting- 
uished as the outer and inner empty glumes. Each flower is also' 
normally inclosed in two bracts, called the flowering glumes. The 
outer of these glumes is called the lemma the inner the palet. All 
of these bracts can thus be called glumes collectively. Through 
reduction of the spikelet and degeneration of the flower, part of 
the glumes may be absent or vestigial, or extra glumes may 
be present. Usually there are 2 (sometimes 3) minute bracts or 
scales at the base of the flower, within the flowering glumes. These 
1 Contributions from the Botanical Laboratory of Ohio State 
University, 67. 
