Wheat
the most valuable and, next to maize or Indian corn, the most productive of all the cereal grasses. The genus Triticum of which the species are popularly known either as wheat or wheat grass, are distinguished by a spike with many-flowered spikelets without stalks, Michigan. and seated one on each notch of the rachis, their sides directed to the rachis, which is zigzag, and two glumes, of which the lower is either awned or awnless; the outer palea of each floret having at the top a notch, in the center of which is the terminal point, sometimes prolonged into an awn, or in some species with many florets tapering into an awn without a notch. The native country of the cultivated wheat has generally been supposed to be the central part of Asia; but the Ægilops ovata, a grass of the regions near the Mediterranean, and of western Asia, becomes transformed by cultivation into wheat and may be regarded as the original form. Common wheat (T. vulgare, æstivum, or sativum) grows to a height generally of three or four feet, and has ears or spikes generally three or four inches in length; the spike four-cornered, Washington. the spikelets about four-flowered. Besides being classified as bearded and beardless the varieties in cultivation are distinguished according to the color of the grain, as white and red wheats.
Some having the ears covered with a short soft_down are known as woolly wheats. Innumerable varieties exist.
Many parts of the United States and British provinces and wide regions of South America are admirably adapted to its cultivation. The value of wheat depends mainly on the quantity of fine Wyoming.
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