A HANDBOOK FOR USE IN THE FIELD AND LABORATORY. BY H. MARSHALL WARD, Sc.D., F.R.S. LATE PROFESSOR OF BOTANY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE. CAMBRIDGE: AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS. 1908 First Edition 1901 Reprinted 1908...

T HE following pages have been written in the hope that they may be used in the field and in the laboratory with specimens of our ordinary grasses in the hand. Most of the exercises involved demand exact study by means of a good hand-lens, a mode of investigation far too much neglected in modern teaching. The book is not intended to be a complete manual of grasses, but to be an account of our common native species, so arranged that the student may learn how to closely observe and deal with the d

That grasses are interesting and important plants is a fact recognised by botanists all the world over, yet it would appear that people in general can hardly have appreciated either their interest or their importance seeing how few popular works have been published concerning their structure and properties. Apart from their almost universal distribution, and quite apart from the fascinating interest attaching to those extraordinary tropical giants, the Bamboos, West Indian Sugar-cane, the huge R

The leaves of all our grasses consist of the blade , which passes directly into the sheath , without any petiole or leaf-stalk (Fig.  1 ). The sheath is usually obviously split , and so rolled round the internode that one edge overlaps the other, but in the following grasses the sheath is either quite entire , or only slit a short way down, the two edges being fused as it were for the greater part of its length. Sheath more or less entire. In some cases—e.g. Arrhenatherum , Bromus asper , and Ho

I. Sheaths entire except where those of lower leaves are burst by branches, &c. A. Aquatics with the sheaths reticulated, owing to large air-cavities. Leaves equitant, linear acute, often floating. Glyceria fluitans (Br.). Floating sweet grass. Somewhat coarse, but useful pasture in water-meadows and fens. Sweet-tasting. Section of sheathed leaves linear oblong; sheath striate or furrowed, keeled; leaf ribbed; ligule broad acute. Leaf-base with a yellow triangle. Smooth. Glyceria aquatic

The principal anatomical features observed in the leaves of grasses—apart from finer histological details into which it is not my purpose to enter—concern the characters of the epidermis and distribution of the stomata and hairs, the arrangement of the chlorophyll-tissue, that of the mechanical tissue (sclerenchyma) and the vascular bundles to which the venation and ribbing of the leaves are due, and the presence or absence of those peculiar thin-walled cells (motor-cells) which bring about the

I. The chlorophyll-tissue, on transverse sections, is arranged in rings round the vascular bundles. There are motor-cells between the ribs, and the stomata are sunk and occur on both faces. Cynodon Dactylon. The larger lateral nerves have as a rule three smaller ones between each pair, hardly projecting as ribs. Chlorophyll chiefly in a ring round the vascular bundle. Long hairs on lower surface, a few papillæ above. Motor-cells in each shallow furrow. Short cells occur between the long epiderma

When the flowering shoot of a grass pushes up into the light and air from the enveloping leaves, it forms a more or less branched collection of flowers known as the Inflorescence , and in all our grasses this inflorescence consists of a principal stalk, haulm or culm , on which shorter stalks—branched or not—are arranged. The mode of branching is usually such that the youngest branches are nearest the top, and the oldest nearest the bottom. It is evident at once, on comparing the Moor Mat-grass

I. Grasses with only one perfect flower in the spikelet. (1) Inflorescence spikate 10 . A. Inflorescence a spike of simple spikelets. Nardus stricta , L. A tough wiry tufted moor-grass, with setaceous leaves, secund spikelets with a single rudimentary glume, and a stiff simple hairy style. (Fig.  2 .) The much rarer Mibora verna about three inches or so high, and Lepturus , both with flat leaves, also come here. Certain superficial resemblances in the habit or inflorescence in Festuca Myurus and

The stigma of an ordinary grass consists of two divaricating plume-like structures composed of thin-walled cells. When the paleæ open these stigmatic plumes protrude, one on either side, and readily catch pollen shed from the dangling stamens and carried by the wind, and since the pollen of the same flower is usually shed at a time when the stigmas of many neighbouring plants are mature, there is every opportunity for cross-fertilisation. (Fig.  33 .) In some cases, however, e.g. Anthoxanthum ,

I. “Seed" rounded (Millet-seed 12 type). Caryopsis ovoid or sub-globose, devoid of distinct groove, and distending the awnless paleæ, or falling out free. A. Glumes cuspidate, “fruit" yellowish. Phleum pratense. The student should familiarise himself with the “seed" of Phleum pratense , as a type, and an important grass easily obtained pure, but sometimes with minute round seeds of weeds intermixed. Phleum pratense , L. (Fig.  45 ). Palea 2·3 mm. long, five-ribbed, with a short point, delicate b

Bentham and Hooker , British Flora , London, 1896. Bonnier and Layens , Nouvelle Flore de France , Paris, 1887. Bruns , Der Grasembryo in Flora , 1892, vol. LXXVI . Burchard , Die Unkrautsamen der Klee-und Grasarten , Berlin, 1900. Darwin , Power of Movement in Plants , London, 1880. Duval Jouve , in Mémoires de l’Acad. des Sciences de Montpellier , 1871, vol. VII . Fream , Elements of Agriculture , London, 1892. Grob , in Bibliotheca Botanica , H. 36, 1896. Guérin , Recherches sur le développem