GRASS FAMILY 
199 
in the period after gold days, our Californians were extensive pro¬ 
ducers of wheat. The grain ships for Liverpool made a forest of masts 
in San Francisco Bay and Carquinez Straits. Nowadays we do not 
produce sufficient wheat for our own mills. 
15. SECALE L. Rye 
Tall slender herbs. Spikes terminal, dense. Spikelets with 2 perfect 
flowers, sessile on the opposite sides of a zig-zag rachis. Glumes subulate, 
1-nerved. Lemmas keeled, long-awned. (Said to be from Latin seco, 
to cut.) 
1. S. cereale L. Native of Asia; cult, widely in the U. S., the grain 
used for making bread and for distilling gin. Tradition says gin pro¬ 
duced most extraordinary effects of a highly exhilirating character upon 
the imbiber, succeeded by languor or stupor, in the case of extreme 
potations, sometimes ending in death. 
16. HORDEUM L. Wild Barley 
Plants with flat blades and dense terminal cylindric spikes. Spikelets 
1-flowered, 3 (sometimes 2) together at each node of the rachis, the 
middle one sessile or subsessile, the lateral ones pediceled, the back of the 
lemma turned from the rachis. Rachilla in the central spikelet pro¬ 
longed behind the palea as a bristle and sometimes bearing a rudimen¬ 
tary floret; lateral spikelets usually imperfect, sometimes reduced to 
bristles. Glumes narrow, often subulate and awned, rigid, standing in 
front of the spikelet. Lemmas rounded on the back, 5-nerved, usually 
obscurely so, tapering into a usually long awn. (Ancient Latin name 
for barley.) 
Rachis not disarticulating at maturity; plants annual.1. H. vulgare. 
Rachis disarticulating at maturity (that is, breaking up into joints). 
Plants annual. 
Glumes or some of them ciliate.2. H. murinum. 
Glumes not ciliate.3. H. gussoneanum. 
Plants perennial.4. H. nodosum. 
1. H. vulgare L. Cultivated Barley. Culms 5 to 15 dm. high; 
auricles of the-blade prominent, glabrous; spike densely flowered, 7 to 
9.5 cm. long, not including the long awns; lemma fusiform, narrowed 
into a scabrous flat awn 7 to 14 cm. long.—Native of the Old World; 
cult, extensively in Cal. The grain is used as food for horses and swine, 
and also for flour in bread-making. Var. trifurcatum Wend. Beardless 
Barley. Awns suppressed, replaced by short lobes or teeth.—Cult. 
2. H. murinum L. Farmer’s Foxtail. Culms bushy-branched, 
spreading; sheaths and blades smooth; spike 5 to 8 cm. long, often partly 
enclosed in the uppermost inflated sheath; glumes of the central spikelet 
narrowly spindle-form, 3-nerved, long-ciliate on both margins, the nerves 
scabrous; awn about 2.5 cm. long; glumes of the lateral spikelets unlike, 
the inner similar to the central, the outer setaceous, not ciliate; lemmas 
all broad, 8 to 10 mm. long, the awns somewhat exceeding those of the 
glumes.—Fields, waste places and open ground, very common and abund¬ 
ant ; nat. from Eur. 
3. H. gussoneanum Pari. Culms numerous, spreading or geniculate 
at base, 1.5 to 3.8 dm. high; sheaths and flat blades, especially the lower. 
