WILD, OR NATIVE FLOWERS. 105 



themselves together, forming a sort of hard rope ; the barbed seed hes 

 below, attached to these twisted arrows. There is al?o on the prairies a 

 wild grass known by the descriptive name of Porcupine Grass ; possibly 

 the Arrow Grass may be the same plant with another name. But turning 

 from this uninviting Prairie Pest, as the settlers call it, I would rather call 

 attention to the useful and sweet-scented Indian Grass, which supplies the 

 poor Indian-woman with the material which she weaves into such lovely, 

 tasteful, ornamental baskets, now almost her only resource for materials 

 for her basket-work, by which industry she can earn a small addition 

 to her scanty means of obtaining food and clothing. Were it not going 

 beyond the bounds of my subject I might plead earnestly in behalf of 

 my destitute, and too much neglected, Indian sisters and dwell upon 

 their wants and trials ; but this theme would lead me too far away from 

 my subject. The Indian Grass, so called Hierochloa borealis, (Roem. &:Scb.) 

 is little known in its native state, as it is only the Indians themselves who 

 know where to seek for it. This is among lonely lakes and forest haunts. 

 The soil where it grows is low, sandy flats, especially on shores where 

 the soil is composed of disintegrated friable rocks, reduced to gritty, 

 coarse sand, where it can send up its slender, white, running roots most 

 freely ; and there it sends up early in May its culms and light panicles of 

 shining flowers ; the glossy straw-coloured plumes and purple anthers 

 make this grass a very lovely object. The leaves, too, are of a shining 

 bright full green. It is the earliest of any of the grasses to push up its 

 pointed blades above the ground ; and, as far as my knowledge of the 

 plant goes, for I have had it in my garden for many many years, it is 

 the earliest to blossom. Only when dried, or rather withered, does it 

 give out its sweet scent, which it retains for years. 



I have braided the long ribband-like leaves and made dinner-mats 

 of them, and also chains tied with coloured ribbon, after the Indian 

 fashion and sent them to friends in the Old Country to lay like Lavender 

 in their drawers. One thing I must observe of the Indian Sweet-grass, 

 although it grows readily, and flourishes in any odd corner of the garden 

 in which you plant it, it rarely puts forth a flowering stem, nor can I 

 account for this unless it may be the absence of some speciality in the 

 native soil that is lacking, and for the need of which it may grow 

 luxuriantly as to leaf but brings no fruit to perfection. 



Among the common wild grasses we have many kinds known by 

 such expressive names as Red-top, Blue-joint, Herds grass, Beaver 

 Meadow-grass, Wild Oats, Wild Barley, Fox-tail, Squirrel-tail, Poverty- 

 grass, Cock's-foot, Couch or Spear-grass, Millet, with many others, named 

 or unnamed, that are peculiar to certain localities, in open fields, in the 

 shade of the forest, the thicket, the banks of creeks, in water, or on 



