HOUTUS (iKAMINEUS WOBURNENSIS. 89 



FESTUCA pratensis. Meadow Fescue. 



Specific character : Panicle nearly upright, branched, 

 spreading, turned to one side ; spikelets linear, com- 

 pressed ; florets numerous, cylindrical, obscurely ribbed ; 

 nectary four-cleft ; root fibrous. 



Refer. — Fig. I. Spikelet magnified, showing florets and 

 tlie calyx. 2. Four-cleft nectary. 3. Obvate germen, 

 with its short styles and thick feathery stigmas. 



Native of Britain. Root fibrous, perennial. 



Obs. — Dr. Withering makes this a variety of the yes/z<f« 

 elatior; but it is more justly made a distinct species 

 in Sir J. E. Smith's English Botany, and in his English 

 Flora. It differs from the^esf wca e/fl^/or in being only 

 iialf the height, the leaves only half the breadth, the 

 panicle shorter, and containing only half the number 

 of flowers. The panicle is but once branched, droops 

 but slightly, and leans to one side when in flower, and 

 the flowers grow all one way. In the elatior the pa- 

 nicle branches both ways, it droops much at first, and 

 the flowers grow much more loosely ; the spikelets are 

 more rovmd, ovate, and pointed : whereas in the pra- 

 tensis they are somewhat linear, flat, and obtuse. 



Experiments.^- On the 16th of April, the produce from a 

 fertile peat soil, with coal ashes as manure, is 10,890 lbs. 

 per acre. 



The grass at the time of flowering is of greater value than 

 at the time the seed is ripe, proportionally as 3 to 1. 



The weight of nutritive matter which is lost by leaving 

 the crop of this grass till the seed be ripe, is therefore very 

 great. That it should lose more of its weight at this stage 

 of growth than at the time of flowering, perfectly agrees 

 with the deficiency of nutritive matter in the seed crop, in 

 proportion to the nutritive matter afforded by the flowering 

 crop ; the straws being succulent in the grass of the latter 

 crop, while those of the former are dry, and constitute a 

 much smaller proportion of the weight of the crop than in 

 the flowering crop. It may be observed here, that there is 

 a <2;rcaL difference between cuhns and leaves of grasses that 

 have been dried after they were cut in a green and succulent 



