10 
The effect of the water on growth was in many cases very 
marked; some plants went to rest prematurely whilst others 
grew stunted and weak. The effect in the Herbaceous Ground 
was pretty much the same, Campanulas being among the worst 
sufferers. 
IIl—THE KEW LAWNS AND THE DROUGHT. 
(An account of observations made matin the second and 
third weeks of August, 1921.) 
W. B. Turriit. 
The abnormally dry summer of last year provided the oppor- 
tunity for making, at the suggestion of the Assistant Director, 
a number of observations on the resistance of lawn plants to 
drought. While the results of these observations are in no. way 
unexpected it has been thought advisable to place them on 
record in a short article. 
It is well known that grasslands require constantly recurring, 
rather than heavy, precipitation to reach perfection or to keep 
continuously green. This fact has been well emphasised by 
A. W. F. Schimper, Plant Geography, p. 174, and is further 
illustrated by the distribution of the best grasslands in the 
British Isles. This being so, it would naturally be expected 
that lawns, meadows and pastures would be amongst the first 
plant associations to suffer in a prolonged spell of dry weather. 
On the other hand, relatively quick recovery usually follows a 
sufficient rainfall, the rain soon reaching to the roots and stimu- 
lating the development of fresh vaginal shoots in the perennial 
species, and the germination of dormant seeds of some of the 
annual ones. Even after last summer’s drought the turf at 
Kew was becoming green again by Aug. 19th after the showers 
of the preceding week, and numerous new green shoots, an inch 
or more high, were to be found on many of the lawns. 
Most ‘of the Kew lawns at the beginning of August looked 
parched and dry, and onlyin a few hollows, or in places artificially 
watered, was the grass as a whole really green. In hollows the 
water in the soil and subsoil would naturally be greater in amount 
than where the surface is level. Again, the presence of a con- 
spicuous green margin to or ring around those flower-beds, trees 
or shrubs, which were watered during the dry weather, showed 
how a comparatively small sum total of water is required to kee 
grass fresh. A bright green patch of grass during the drought 
and away from a watered bed, tree or shrub, was almost invari- 
ably found to indicate the presence of a hydrant from which 
water had been withdrawn. Two conclusions are obvious, that 
the drying up of the grasses was due directly to lack of water in 
the soil and subsoil, and that the survival in a green state of any 
portion of lawn is due mainly, not to a difference in floristic 
