GRASSES; one of the seven tribes or natural families, into which all vegetables are distributed by Linnæus in his Philosophia Botanica. They are defined to be plants which have very simple leaves, a jointed stem, a husky calyx termed gluma, and a single seed. This description includes the several sorts of corn as well as grasses. In Tournefort they constitute a part of the fifteenth class, termed apetali; and in Linnæus's sexual method, they are mostly contained in the second order of the third class, called triandra digynia.

This numerous and natural family of the grasses has engaged the attention and researches of several eminent botanists. The principal of these are, Ray, Monti, Michelii, and Linnæus.

M. Monti, in his Catalogus stirpium agri Bononiensis graminis ac hujus modi affinia complectens, printed at Bononia in 1719, divides the grasses from the disposition of their flowers, as Theophrastus and Ray have divided them before him, into three sections or orders.—These are, 1. Grasses having flowers collected in a spike. 2. Grasses having their flowers collected in a panicle or loose spike. 3. Plants that in their habit and external appearance are allied to the grasses.

This class would have been natural if the author had not improperly introduced sweet-rush, juncus, and arrow-headed grass, into the third section. Monti enumerates about 306 species of the grasses, which he reduces under Tournefort's genera; to these he has added three new genera.

Scheuchzer in his Aristographia, published likewise in 1719, divides the grasses, as Monti, from the disposition of their flowers, into the five following sections: 1. Grasses with flowers in a spike, as phalaris, anthoxanthum, and frumentum. 2. Irregular grasses, as schizanthus, and cornucopiae. 3. Grasses with flowers growing in a simple panicle or loose spike, as reed and millet. 4. Grasses with flowers growing in a compound panicle, or diffused spike, as oats and pan. 5. Plants by their habit nearly allied to the grasses, as cypress-grass, scirpus, linagrostis, rush, and scheuchzeria.

Scheuchzer has enumerated about four hundred species, which he describes with amazing exactness. Micheli has divided the grasses into six sections, which contain in all 44 genera, and are arranged from the situation and number of the flowers.

name of the fourth order in Linnæus's Fragments of a Natural Method, consisting of the numerous and natural family of the grasses, viz. agrostis, aira, alopecurus or fox-tail grass, anthoxanthum or vernal grass, aristida, arundo or reed, avena or oats, bohartia, briza, bromus, cinna, cornucopiae or horn of plenty grass, cynosurus, dactylis, elymus, festuca or fescue-grass, hordeum or barley, lagurus or hare's-tail grass, lolium or darnel, lygeum or hooded matweed, Graminis melica, milium or millet, nardus, oryza or rice, panicum Graminis or panic-grass, paspalum, phalaris or canary-grass, phleum, poa, saccharum or sugar-cane, secale or rye, stipa or winged spike-grass, triticum or wheat, uniola or seaside oats of Carolina, coix or Job's tears, olyra, pharus, tripacum, zea, Indian Turkey wheat or Indian corn, zizania, zeolops or wild fescue-grass, andropogon, apulida, cenchrus, holcus or Indian millet, ischaemum.

See Botany.