XIII.— GOOD-FRIDAY GRASS. 
Luzula campestris De Candolle. 
T O those who have not paid much attention to the structure of flowers there 
will not appear much similarity between a Rush and a Lily ; but when we 
make a scientific scrutiny of their comparative anatomy we find that they cannot be 
very widely separated in any classification based upon floral structure. Accordingly 
we have an Order Liliiflorce which comprises nine Families, of which five are repre- 
sented in our British flora, viz. Juncace<e , Liliace<e , AmarylUdace<e , Dioscoreace^e, and 
Iridace<e. The general characters which these Families have in common are the 
possession of flowers which are usually polysymmetric and trimerous, with fifteen 
floral leaves in five circles of three each, ovules inverted as they develop ( anatropous ), 
and a fleshy or cartilaginous food-store or “albumen” in the seed. The two 
perianth-whorls may be alike or unlike one another, membranous or dry ( glumaceous ), 
or petaloid, and occasionally the whole symmetry is tetramerous or pentamerous, that 
is to say that there are four or five parts in each whorl instead of the usual three. 
Though there are normally two circles of stamens, the inner circle is sometimes absent. 
It must be admitted that the name Juncaginace # , which their rush-like habit has 
obtained for the small Family, of which the Arrow-grasses ( Triglochin ) are examples, 
is somewhat confusingly like Juncace<e , the name of the larger Family to which the 
Rushes and Wood-rushes belong. 
The latter Family comprises some seven genera and two hundred species } 
mostly inhabitants of damp and cold places in Temperate or Polar lands. They are 
mostly perennial herbaceous plants, with a creeping scaly rhizome branching 
sympodially, one branch rising annually above ground as a leafy shoot. 
The leaves are usually narrow and slender and may be flat, as in the Wood- 
rushes ( Luzula ), cylindric and tapering or centric , as in most Rushes, or reduced to 
sheathing scales. 
The distinctively brown, glumaceous, wind-pollinated flowers are usually 
crowded together in tufted cymes, with a somewhat complex, unilateral branching ; 
but, in spite of their small size and inconspicuous character, they are generally both 
complete and perfect, that is, they have a perianth of two whorls, although both are 
calyx-like, and both stamens and carpels occur in each flower, a character which 
distinguishes them from the Sedges ( Carex ), a group often growing side by side 
with them. The perianth persists in the fruit stage. 
The six stamens are generally attached to the bases of the perianth-leaves and 
their long linear anthers, which burst inwards and longitudinally, are attached to the 
flattened filaments by their bases, as in Sedges, not being versatile and dorsifixed like 
those of Grasses. The three carpels are united into an ovary, which may be three- or 
one-chambered and becomes a dry capsule ; and they are surmounted in the flower- 
stage by a single style dividing into three remarkable stigmas each with a spirally 
