56 Pasture Problems 



small seeding; hence a few seeds fortuitously introduced from a hedge 

 or elsewhere are without significance. (6) If allowed to run to hay, 

 even from a slight original sowing (the hay is always cut too late in these 

 districts) it rapidly gains on the ground by virtue of self seeding, (c) As 

 Carruthers (4) has shown, this grass is undoubtedly favoured by meadow 

 conditions, {d) Being a strongly compacted caespitose grass, it 

 cannot gain on the ground under pasture conditions, but if sown in 

 large amount it can be made to serve as one of our most valuable pasture 

 grasses. 



Phleum pratense. This is possibly a secondary plant on some of the 

 better soils ; but there is no evidence that it is so on the poorer ones, 

 where it is probably locally exotic or exotic. 



Many farmers aver, however, that if once sown on a field, it will 

 always afterwards re-appear when that field is under grass. It also 

 occurs as a common impurity in Trifolium hyhridum, and this would 

 frequently account for its " unsown " entry into a field. It often succeeds 

 well on poor soils, presumably owing to high rain fall ; it succeeds best 

 under meadow conditions, but is somewhat fickle and requires further 

 accurate study. 



Arrhenatherum avenaceum^. Like Dadylis glomerata although com- 

 mon about hedges and elsewhere, it seldom occurs as a secondary plant 

 to any extent on tended grasslands (on most types it is locally exotic). 

 When sown it succeeds best under meadow conditions. 



Trisetum flavescens^ is possibly a rare and local secondary plant on 

 some types ; has sometimes shown itself able to succeed from seeding 

 {e.g. Table VI D). 



Fesluca jpratensis^ and F. elatior'^ ; the former plant is at best a rare 

 secondary plant on some of the more fertile types, but is elsewhere locally 

 exotic ; the latter is locally exotic or exotic on all the types under review. 

 F. pratensis is probably never an economic success above 600', although 

 a few plants have been found on fields so situated five years after sowing , 

 and even on the better soils at low elevations good results are the excep- 

 tion. F. elatior has proved more successful at high elevation, but is 

 uncertain and does not seem to ofier advantages which are not also 

 possessed by the more reliable Dactylis glomerata. 



Alopecurus 2yratensis'^ is locally exotic or completely exotic to the 

 types on the poorer soils at high elevations and is only a local secondary 

 species on the more fertile soils at low elevations. An indigenous plant 



^ Locally purchased seed is too unreliable in the case of these plants to base much 

 value on the evidence given when such seed is included in the mixtures. 



