A peculiar method of distribution occurs in some alpine and arctic grasses, which grow under conditions where ripening of the fruit is often uncertain. The entire spikelet, or single flowers, are transformed into small-leaved shoots which fall from the axes and readily root in the ground. Some species, such as Poa stricta, are known only in this viviparous condition; others, like our British species Festuca ovina and Poa alpina, become viviparous under the special climatic conditions.
II. Classification.—Gramineae are sharply defined from all other plants, and there are no genera as to which it is possible to feel a doubt whether they should be referred to it or not. The only family closely allied is Cyperaceae, and the points of difference between the two may be here brought together. The best distinctions are found in the position of the embryo in relation to the endosperm—lateral in grasses, basal in Cyperaceae—and in the possession by Gramineae of the 2-nerved palea below each flower. Less absolute characters, but generally trustworthy and more easily observed, are the feathery stigmas, the always distichous arrangement of the glumes, the usual absence of more general bracts in the inflorescence, the split leaf-sheaths, and the hollow, cylindrical, jointed culms—some or all of which are wanting in all Cyperaceae. The same characters will distinguish grasses from the other glumiferous orders, Restiaceae, and Eriocaulonaceae, which are besides further removed by their capsular fruit and pendulous ovules. To other monocotyledonous families the resemblances are merely of adaptive or vegetative characters. Some Commelinaceae and Marantaceae approach grasses in foliage; the leaves of Allium, &c., possess a ligule; the habit of some palms reminds one of the bamboos; and Juncaceae and a few Liliaceae possess an inconspicuous scarious perianth. There are about 300 genera containing about 3500 well-defined species.
The great uniformity among the very numerous species of this vast family renders its classification very difficult. The difficulty has been increased by the confusion resulting from the multiplication of genera founded on slight characters, and from the description (in consequence of their wide distribution) of identical plants under several different genera.
No characters for main divisions can be obtained from the flower proper or fruit (with the exception of the character of the hilum), and it has therefore been found necessary to trust to characters derived from the usually less important inflorescence and bracts.
Robert Brown suggested two primary divisions—Paniceae and Poaceae, according to the position of the most perfect flower in the spikelet; this is the upper (apparently) terminal one in the first, whilst in the second it occupies the lower position, the more imperfect ones (if any) being above it. Munro supplemented this by another character easier of verification, and of even greater constancy, in the articulation of the pedicel in the Paniceae immediately below the glumes; whilst in Poaceae this does not occur, but the axis of the spikelet frequently articulates above the pair of empty basal glumes. Neither of these great divisions will well accommodate certain genera allied to Phalaris, for which Brown proposed tentatively a third group (since named Phalarideae); this, or at least the greater part of it, is placed by Bentham under the Poaceae.
The following arrangement has been proposed by Professor Eduard Hackel in his recent monograph on the order.
A. Spikelets one-flowered, rarely two-flowered as in Zea, falling from the pedicel entire or with certain joints of the rachis at maturity. Rachilla not produced beyond the flowers.
a. Hilum a point; spikelets not laterally compressed.
α Fertile glume and pale hyaline; empty glumes thick, membranous to coriaceous or cartilaginous, the lowest the largest. Rachis generally jointed and breaking up when mature.
1. Spikelets unisexual, male and female in separate inflorescences or on different parts of the same inflorescence.