C. T. WHITE MEMORIAL LECTURE 
SOME FEATURES OF THE GRASSES AND 
OF QUEENSLAND 
) 
S. T. Blake 
The C. T, White Memorial Lecture was instituted to commemorate 
a man who devoted a great part of his life to one phase or another of 
Natural History. An outstanding botonist, he was an active member of 
the Queensland Naturalists' Club from his youth and we remember him 
for his humanity, his friendliness, and his readiness to pass on to any 
enquirer the abundant knowledge ocquired from a lifetime's love and 
study of plants. Mr. White was interested in all plants but especially so in 
woody plants and grasses, the latter chiefly for their economic value. 
Through his influence, Mr. C. E. Hubbard, of the Royal Botanic Gardens, 
Kew, and now the world's leading authority on grasses, spent about a 
year in Queensland in 1930-1 studying and collecting grasses. This visit 
had a profound influence on botany in Queensland and on my own career. 
I was a university student at the time, becoming interested in plant 
classification. After meeting Mr. White and Mr. Hubbard the interest 
became a passion, especially for grasses and the related family of the 
sedges, a passion encouraged by Mr. White then and later when I was 
engaged on research work, and from 1942 as a member of his staff. 
The grass family is one of the largest and most widely spread 
families of flowering plants and is the most numerous in individuals. 
About 6,500 species are known, of which more than 500 are so far known 
in Queensland. Of all the plants of the earth the grasses are the most 
useful to mankind. They include the cereals, sugar-cane, sorghum and 
the bamboos, and provide the bulk of the forage for domestic animals. 
In the last-mentioned category they are the basis for the greater port of 
Australia's national income. Directly or indirectly they furnish the greater 
part of our food and much of our clothing. We are all familiar with grass 
lawns and playing fields. In some part of the world certain grasses are 
used in paper-making, while others, such as lemon grass and citronella 
grass, furnish essential oils used in perfumery, soap-making, cordial 
manufacture, and other industries. The largest of all grasses, the bamboos, 
are of vast importance in the Indo-Malayan region where they are used 
in building, for waterpipes, carrying vessels and many other purposes. 
Straw brooms are made from the seed-heads of broom millet. Starch and 
alcohol are obtained from the grain of some cereals. Grasses are commonly 
used to stabilize banks and control soil erosion. 
The general features of grasses are fairly well known but relatively 
few people ever examine a grass in detail. A grass plant in flower has 
quite a complicated structure. Like most flowering plants, a grass has 
roots, a stem, and leaves below the flowering portion. The stem has 
one or more joints or nodes and is usually more or less cylindrical; some- 
times there are also creeping underground stems without true leaves from 
which leafy stems arise. Each leaf consists of three parts; the uppermost 
part is the obvious part known as the blade and the lowermost part or 
sheath is wrapped around the stem. Where blade and sheath meet is the 
ligule which usually takes the form of a small membrone or a line of 
hairs. Each flower is very small and enclosed by a pair of scales called 
the lemma and palea, the whole comprising a floret. What Is popularly 
thought to be the flower is really a spikelet consisting of usually two 
scale-like glumes surrounding the base of a floret or group of florets. The 
spikelets are often very numerous and there are many different arrange- 
ments of them in the seed-head or inflorescence. The fruit is called a 
grain or caryopsis; the seed-coat is completely attached to the inside of 
the fruit. When the grain is mature the spikelet falls away with it, or the 
florets may fall separately or in groups leaving the glumes behind. In 
