GRASSES OF MAINE. 



23 



Foul Meadow or False Red Top, {Poa serotina), is worthy 

 of a place in a mixture for any land of a loamy texture. 



Velvet Grass, or Soft Meadow Grass, (Holcits lanatus). 

 No species stands drought better. 



Meadow Spear Grass, or Nerved Manna Grass, (Glyceria 

 nervata) frequently known as " bastard foul meadow," is a 

 very valuable pasture grass. 



Barn grass, {Panicum Cms galJi) of which there are 400 

 varieties, is exceedingly nutritious and hardy, and will hold 

 its own against great odds. ^Although a great pest in a corn 

 field, it will furnish more valuable forage, per acre, than any 

 other grass whatever. 



Buffalo Grass, (^Buchloe dactyloides) a nutritious perennial 

 of great endurance, withstanding the tread of cattle better 

 than any other species. 



Gama, or Sesame Grass, {Tripsacum dactyloides) ; large, 

 beautiful and hardy. Best for moist soils, 



Mesquit Grass, [Boutelona oligostachya). A native of 

 Texas ; winters well in Maine. 



Several forage plants, not true grasses, are worthy of trial, 

 as several varieties of wild pea, highly prized in the West. 

 Several Oregon clovers and California trefoils, and a variety 

 of geranium (^Erodium cicutarium) are forage plants of great 

 value, are hardy, and are rich in nutritive matter. 



Each succeeding year adds to the list of herbage which 

 may be made use of as forage plants, for many of the sedges 

 and rushes, as well as many of the true grasses, now neg- 

 lected as worthless, or discarded as weeds, are found to be 

 friendly and palatable to horses, cattle and sheep. Even 

 broom sedge, cut before the seed is ripe, makes good hay. 

 The moose and the deer thrive and get fat on moss and 

 "browse." Cotton seed, so valuable a cattle feed, a few 

 years since was considered of no value. The popular notion, 

 that only a few of the grasses are worthy of cultivation, like 

 the doctrine of the "divine rio-ht of kings," is numbered 

 with other obsolete notions of earlier ages. I am convinced, 

 from experience and observation, that the most of formers 



