66 FODDER AND PASTURE PLANTS. 
Pasture: As a pasture grass it is highly esteemed. It starts 
early in spring, provides superior feed, is eagerly grazed by all kinds 
of stock and is of high fattening value. If sown alone for hay or 
pasture, twenty to thirty pounds of seed should be applied per acre. © 
Seed: Commercial seed of Kentucky Blue Grass nearly all comes 
from a few counties of Kentucky, in the heart of the Blue Grass 
region. It is harvested by hand or by machine strippers which 
rake off the seed and at the same time collect it. The crop is ready 
for stripping when the panicles are yellow .The seed is then fairly 
ripe and when stripped will reach full maturity during the curing 
process. To cure it, the seed must be stirred frequently, during the 
first days at least three times a day, to give the air admission to 
every part and thus prevent heating. If not cured carefully, the 
seed will take on a grey, dusty appearance and a musty smell and 
its vitality will be considerably lessened or even completely destroyed. 
Quality of seed: Good commercial seed is yellowish-brown. 
When taken from the spikelets the seeds have a bunch of long, 
cobweb-like hairs attached to their base. Such hairs are wanting in 
Canadian Blue Grass seed, and it is therefore easy to separate it 
from the Kentucky seed when fresh from the spikelets. During 
curing and cleaning, however, these hairs are generally rubbed off 
and commercial seed of Kentucky and Canadian Blue Grass are 
very much alike. As a rule, the seed of the former is sharp-pointed 
and the nerves of the enclosing glumes distinct, while the seed of the 
latter is blunt and the nerves of the glumes inconspicuous. 
The legal weight per bushel of seed is fourteen pounds. 
ROUGH-STALKED MEADOW GRASS (Poa trivialis L.) 
Botanical description: Rough-stalked Meadow Grass is very 
like the Kentucky Blue. It is perennial with a short rootstock 
from which stems and leafy shoots develop. The latter are either 
upright or creeping. The upright shoots appear in great number 
at the base of the stems, making the plant more conspicuously tufted 
than is Kentucky Blue Grass. The creeping shoots arise in the same 
way but take a horizontal direction. They thus correspond in a 
way to the runners of Kentucky Blue Grass. The differences, how- 
ever, are quite material. The Kentucky Blue Grass shoots are 
underground and scaly while the Rough-stalked Meadow Grass 
shoots always creep on the surface and .carry normally developed 
