Page:An introduction to physiological and systematical botany (1st edition).djvu/441

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TRIANDRIA.
411


CLASS 3. Triandria. Stamens 3.—Orders 3.

1. Monogynia. Valeriana, Engl. Bot. t. 698, 1591 and 1531, is placed here because most of its species have three stamens. See Class 1. Here also we find the sword-leaved plants, so amply illustrated in Curtis's Magazine, Iris, Gladiolus, Ixia, &c., also Crocus, Engl. Bot. t. 343, 344, 491, and numerous grass-like plants, Schœnus, Cyperus, Scirpus, see Fl. Græc. v. 1, and Engl. Bot. t. 950, 1309, 542, 873, &c.


2. Digynia. This important Order consists of the true Grasses; see p. 127. Their habit is more easily perceived than defined; their value, as furnishing herbage for cattle, and grain for man, is sufficiently obvious. No poisonous plant is found among them, except the Lolium temulentum, Engl. Bot. t. 1124, said to be intoxicating and pernicious in bread. Their genera are not easily defined. Linnæus, Jussieu, and most botanists pay regard to the number of florets in each spikelet, but in Arundo this is of no mo-