The Book of Grasses 



nerves and mid-nerve, usually tawny orange or reddish at apex; 



palets nearly as long as flowering scales. Stamens 3. 

 Wet meadows and swampy places. June to August. 

 Nova Scotia to Vancouver Island, south to New Jersey, Illinois, and 



Nebraska. 



THE MANNA-GRASSES 



NERVED MANNA-GRASS, TALL MANNA-GRASS, RATTLESNAKE GRASS, 



DENSELY FLOWERED MANNA-GRASS, FLOATING MANNA-GRASS, 



AND SHARP-SCALED MANNA-GRASS 



In June, when the low swales by the brooks are full of interest, 

 and a score of flowering plants may be gathered from the vantage 

 ground of a drier tussock in the marsh, the graceful Manna-grasses 

 cover large areas and bloom in tones of dull green and purple, 

 darker where the sun has burned them longer, but typical of spring 

 as are the nearby orchids, and ever lacking that suggestion of mid- 

 summer heat which the reddish purple Bent-grasses bring to July 

 fields. 



Nerved Manna-grass usually precedes the other species by a 

 fortnight, and is perhaps the most common in a majority of the 

 states. Growing luxuriantly in the borderland between pasture 

 and marsh it furnishes an important part of the herbage of wet 

 meadows, and, though it varies greatly in different soils, the 

 gracefully drooping panicles may be recognized by their spread- 

 ing and drooping branches and their tiny, purple and green 

 spikelets. 



Tall Manna-grass (Glyceria grdndis), a stout, handsome species, 

 is often seen in wet grounds, where the ample panicles and broad 

 leaves rise above sedges and low grasses. Like others of the 

 genus, Tall Manna-grass is a species of which cattle are fond and 

 wade through miry bogs to reach, and water fowl, during the fall 

 migration, find resting places along streams where these grasses 

 grow abundantly, as the seeds yield a feast to thousands of birds. 

 Tall Manna-grass is from three to five feet in height and bears 

 large panicles of many spikelets. 



Heavy, drooping panicles of Rattlesnake Grass are found lean- 

 ing over narrow brooks and ditches, and by damp waysides where 

 meadow-rue and sedges luxuriate. With pendent, inflated spike- 

 lets of pale green and purple this grass is the most beautiful of the 



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