In considering the arboreal habit, we noticed that the flowers of the Bambuseae were developed on a fuller plan than those of the other grasses, and approached more nearly to the complete Monocotyledonous type. This contrast will be realised on comparing Fig. 33, which represents the flower of a bamboo, with Fig. 34, p. 111, which shows the relatively reduced flower of Rye. It is thus obvious that the best way to understand the flower of the Gramineae is to start with the bamboo, but, unfortunately, the historical process has followed the reverse direction. Because analytical botany began in temperate regions, there has been a tendency to treat the exiguous European grass as the type form for the Gramineae. This has led to an exaggerated idea of the degree of peculiarity of the flower in this family, which has found expression in a special and elaborate terminology. Much of this terminology, and also of the controversy which has raged about the interpretation of the ‘palea’ and “lodicules’, might have been spared, if the study of the Gramineae had proceeded from the tropics to the temperate regions, and not vice versa. So, in order to follow the logical course, we will now examine the flowers of the bamboos, leaving those of the ‘grasses’, in the limited sense, to be dealt with in later chapters.

In the bamboos which flower annually, the inflorescence terminates the leaf-bearing culm; but in those which are gregarious and periodic flowerers, the leaves fall, and the whole culm becomes one huge reproductive shoot.