SACCHARUM, in botany, sugar cane, a genus of the Triandria Digynia class and order. Natural order of Gramina, Gra minex, or grasses. Essential character : calyx two-valved, involucred with a long lanugo ; corolla two-valved. There are eleven species : among which we shall notice the S. officinartim, common sugar cane. The root of this plant is jointed, like that of other sorts of cane, or reed ; from this root arise four, five, or more shoots, proportionable to the age or strength of the root, eight or ten feet high, according to the goodness of the ground in very good rich soils, canes have been measured nearly twenty feet in height : these are not sn much esteemed as those of a middling growth, abounding in juice, and having little of the essential salt.
The canes are jointed, more or less distant, according to the soil ; a leaf is found at each joint, the base of which embraces the stalk to the next joint above its insertion, before it expands ; from hence to the point it is three or four feet in length ; on the under side is a deep whitish furrow, or hollowed midrib, broad and prominent ; the edges are thin, and armed with small sharp teeth, which are scarcely to be discerned with the naked eye; the flowers are produced in panicles, at the top of the stalks, from two to three feet long, composed of many spikes, nine or ten inches in length ; these are again subdivided into smaller spikes, having a long down enclosing the flowers, so as to hide them from sight; the seed is oblong, pointed, and ripens in the valves of the flower. It has been asserted that the
sugar-cane is not indigenous of America ; but that it migrated through the Euro peans from Sicily and Spain, to Madeira, and the Canary Islands, afterwards to the West Indian islands, to Mexico, Peru, and Brazil.