56 WHITE MOUNTAIN RICE. 



surrounding the upper, with a straight awn at the tip, 

 nearly an inch long. Stamens three, anthers linear, yel- 

 low ; styles distinct. Flowers in August. Not cultivated. 

 WHITE MOUNTAIN RICE (Oryzopsis asperifolia) is 

 also common on steep, rocky hillsides, and in dry woods. 

 Stems clasped by sheaths, bearing a mere rudimentary 

 blade, overtopped by the long and rigid linear leaf from 

 the base ; awn two or three times the length of the 

 hairy whitish husks or paleae. Perennial, growing from 

 a foot to eighteen inches high. The lower or radical 

 leaves remain green through the winter. The large 

 seeds are abundantly farinaceous, and make a very white 

 and fine flour ; but the grain drops so easily as to make 

 it impracticable to gather it in large quantities. 



SMALLEST ORYZOPSIS, or CANADIAN RICE ( Oryzopsis 

 Canadensis), is another species sometimes found. These 

 grasses are easily distinguished from each other. The 

 first has an awn thrice the length of the blackish palea ; 

 the second, an awn two or three times the length of the 

 whitish palea; the third, an awn short, deciduous, or 

 wanting. The first grows from two to three feet high ; 

 the second, from ten to eighteen inches; the third, 

 from six to fifteen inches. Natural habitat, dry, rocky 

 woods. Perennial. Not cultivated. 



It may be proper to remark, in passing, that many 

 grasses which are now worthless, or of no known value 

 in agriculture, might be made very useful to cultivate 

 for the purpose of turning in green for manure. 



The same may be said of many of the rank weeds 

 which are now regarded as the pests of our fields and 

 roadsides. Some of them, if sown on winter grains, 

 would spring up luxuriantly after the grain was removed, 

 drawing much of their nutriment from the air, and cor- 

 porifying it, as it were, to be turned in while still green, 

 with the stubble, and thus add vastly to the fertility 



