THE FLOEAL WORLD AND GARDEN GUIDE. 



199 



and other like damp spots, and very plentiful near London. The 

 flower-spikes may be likened to wire-work dotted with beads to 

 form a loose pyramidal pattern. The purple Molinia, Molinia 

 ccerula, merits notice as the darkest-coloured of all our grasses, the 

 colour of the glumes being dark-green with reddened tinge of 

 blue, and the large anthers are of a purple colour. In form it is 

 poor, the spikelets being on a long, straight, wire-like stem, few and 

 distant. The Soft Meadow grass, Eolcus lanatus, may be found 

 wherever a grass of any kind can live; and you may know it 

 by its large and beautiful soft panicle of numerous small spikelets 



PANICLE OF COMMON QUAKING GBASS (NATUBAL SIZE.) 



of a pinkish-purple colour, and its downy leaves. The flowering 01 

 this grass is in many districts the signal to begin bay-making. 



The Eeed Meadow grass, Poa aquatica, grows on the margin ot 

 almost every river in the land, and you must make acquaintance 

 with it, or, as a botanist, be accounted " nowhere " in the grasses. 

 It bears a noble plume above its broad bright-green leaves, and 

 makeB a bonnie show in the shallows, when in flower. As for the 

 other poas, fifteen in number, we had best slide past all save one, 

 and that one, the Rough Meadow grass, Poa Irivialis, is one of 

 the very best for garden lawns in the vicinity of towns, and there- 



Joly. 



