GRASS FAMILY. 355 



P. el^tior, Taller Meadow Fescue, A rather rigid grass of meadows 

 and jKistures, nat. from Europe: l°-4° high, with green flat leaves, a narrow 

 panicle with short branches appressed before and after flowering, 5 - 10-flowered 

 green spikelets, the lower palet blunt, or acute, or rarely with a short awn. 2/ 



Brdmus, Brome Grass. Spikelets large, at length drooping in an open 

 panicle, containing 5-lQ or more flowers, the lower palet with a short bristle 

 point or an awn from the blunt rounded tip or notch, the upper palet soon adher- 

 ing to the grain. Coarse grasses : two or three wild species are common, and the 

 following are weeds of cultivation, from Europe, or the last cultivated for fodder. 



B. Sec^linus, Common Chess or Cheat. Too well known in wheat- 

 fields ; nearly smooth ; panicle open and spreading, even in fruit ; spikelets 

 turgid ; flowers laid broadly over each other in the two ranks ; lower palet 

 convex on the back, concave within, awnless or short-awned. ® @ 



B. raeemdsus. Upright Chess : like the other, but with narrower 

 erect panicle contracted in fruit, lower palet slender-awned, and sheaths some- 

 times hairy. ® @ 



B. mdllis, Soft Chess : like the preceding, but soft-downy, with denser 

 conical-ovate spikelets, and the long-awned lower palet acute. ® ® 



B. unioloides, or B. SchrIderi (Ceratochloa unioloides) : lately 

 much prized for fodder, may be valuable S., is rather stout and broad-leaved, 

 with drooping large spikelets much flattened laterally, so that the lower palets 

 are almost conduplicate and keeled on the back. ^ 



Brlza maxima, Large Quaking Grass or Rattlesnake-Grass, is 

 sometimes cult, in gardens for ornament, from Eu. : a low grass, with the 

 hanging many-flowered ovate-heart-shaped spikelets somewhat like those of 

 Bromus, but pointless, very tumid, purplish, becoming dry and papery, rattling 

 in the wind, — whence the common name. ® 



■^ -^ -^ Grain and Meadow- Grasses, with a mostly twisted or hent awn on the 

 back of the lower palet : flowers 2 or 3, or few in the spiketet, and mostly 

 shorter than the glumes. 



++ Flowers perfect or the uppermost rudimentary. 



Av6na sativa, Cultivated Oat, from Old World : soft and smooth, 

 with a loose panicle of large drooping spikelets, the palets investing the grain, 

 one flower with a long twisted awn on the back, the other awnless. (T) 



A. nilda, Skinless Oat, rarely cult, from Old "World : has narrower 

 roughish leaves, 3 or 4 flowers in the spikelet, and grain loose in the palets. ® 



++ ++ One flower perfect and one staminate only. 



Arrenathferum aveniceum, Oat-Grass, or Grass-of-the-Andes. 

 Rather coarse but soft grass, introduced from Europe into meadows and fields, 

 and rather valuable : 2° -4° high, with flat linear leaves, long and loose panicle, 

 thin and very unequal glumes, including a staminate fiower, the lower palet, of 

 which bears a long bent awn below its middle, above this a perfect flower with 

 its lower palet bristle-pointed from near the tip, and above that a rudiment of a 

 third flower. JJ. 



Holcus lanatus, Velvet-Grass, or Meadow-Soft-Grass. Introduced 

 from Eu. into meadows, not very common, UO-2° high, well distinguished by 

 its i)aleness and velvety softness, being soft downv all over; panicle' crowded ; 

 the flowers only 2 in the spikelet, small, rather distant, the lower one perfect 

 and awnless, the upper staminate and with a curved or hooked awn below the 

 tip of its lower palet. y, 



§ 2. Spikelets either strictly spiked or in a panicle so contracted and dense as to 

 imitate a spike. {Here would besought one species of Calamagrostis and 

 one of Phalaris,/or which see above, p. 3.54, 355. j 



* A um borne low down on the back of one or two palets. 



Anthox^nthum odor^tum, Sweet-sokxted Vernal-Grass, nat. 

 from Eu. : the plani which gives delicious fragrance to drying hay (the other, 



