90 GRAMINEA® 
are much smaller than those of any other species, and much more numerous, 
and they are peculiar too for their unequal glumes. By the end of July the 
yellow colour of the cluster changes to a dull brown hue. The plant is not 
very leafy, but the foliage is relished by cattle. It is the stem of this plant 
which Mr. Cobbett thinks superior to any native grass for straw plait ; it 
has very few knots. Some botanists separate it from the other Oat-grasses 
and know it as 7risetwm flavescens. 
34. (30) REED (Phragmites). 
Common Reed (P. commumis).—Panicle large, loose; spikelets 3—6- 
flowered, longer than the very unequal empty glumes; flowering glumes 
enveloped in long silky hairs attached to the rachilla. Perennial. All who 
have lingered at midsummer by country streams, listening to their music as 
the waters rustled the sedges or rippled softly over the stones, have observed 
this tall purplish-brown grass, like a waving plume, growing in thick masses, 
and five or six feet high. In its early growth the cluster is close and of a 
deep rich purplish-brown ; then the tint becomes lighter, and the plume, at 
that time a foot or more long, droops gracefully on one side. A little later 
the numerous spikelets seem to have turned to pale grey, by the growth of 
the long silky hairs which surround the florets, and they are thenceforward 
a mass of down. One may see far away on the landscape this tall reed, 
fringing many a river, and forming there a miniature grove. Its smooth 
leaves, about a foot long, are ribbed, rough on the edges, and of a bright 
green colour. Patches of immense extent are formed by this plant in the 
eastern part of England, and called there Reed-ronds. Great use is made 
of the stems in thatching cottages and barns, for they make the very best of 
thatch, and the practice of so using them seems very old, as we find Tusser, . 
in his poem, directing the husbandman to the timely care of his roof :— 
‘¢ Where houses be reeded, 
Now pare off the moss, and go beat in the Reed.” 
The long stems serve also for cottage ceilings, for screens, and other 
household purposes; while these, as well as the long creeping roots, are 
turned to good account in forming embankments near the river. In Sweden 
the panicle is used by country people to dye woollen cloth of a rich green. 
Our own villagers sometimes make a pickle of the young shoots, which they 
cut off from the root; and in early days the long stems were used not only 
for arrows, but also instead of quills for writing. ‘This elegant plant is not 
merely an ornament to the margin of the waters. In many low lands of 
Huntingdonshire, Cambridgeshire, and Lincolnshire, it constitutes the crop 
of the moist soil, and in its proper season is duly harvested, and even taken 
for sale into neighbouring counties for the various uses to which it may be 
applied. An immense number of aquatic birds find their home among these 
reeds ; and the ornithologist sometimes finds sheltered there the rare bearded 
titmouse, with many of the more common birds; while the sedge-warbler 
hangs her nest on the tall reed, and swings in her safe cradle to the rocking 
winds. So much injury is done by some birds to the reed crops that the 
farmers of these districts are compelled, during autumn, to be at much 
