128 COMMON WEEDS 



Owing to its slender growth, its long period of 

 flowering, and the fact that it may occur freely amongst 

 wheat and other corn crops, Slender Foxtail is some- 

 what difficult to cope with. Yet much may be done 

 towards its eradication. Should a slender grass be 

 found plentifully in a corn crop, it should, even before 

 flowering, be submitted for examination to a com- 

 petent botanist, and if found to be Slender Foxtail 

 should be destroyed by hoeing and hand pulling. At 

 harvest time many seeds are shed during the operation 

 of binding or reaping ; this may be guarded against 

 to some extent by the use of the seed-catching box 

 referred to at p. 30. In the subsequent root crop 

 thorough cultivation and hoeing will destroy many of 

 the young plants which appear ; this is doubtless the 

 chief means by which this troublesome weed grass 

 may be reduced. As the seeds of Slender Foxtail not 

 infrequently occur in samples of grass seeds, the sowing 

 of such impure seeds should be carefully avoided. 



Bent Grasses (Agrostis sp., especially A. slolonifera 

 Koch, and A. vulgaris With.), described at p. 217, are 

 often extremely abundant in arable land. The latter 

 species is in some districts the only " Twitch " which 

 is troublesome. Where these extensively creeping and 

 harmful grasses occur, they should be attacked in the 

 manner recommended in the case of true Couch (p. 

 132), but not by laying land down to pasture. 



Wild Oat Grass or Havers (A vena fatua L.) is a 

 troublesome annual weed in cornfields, and most 

 noticeable in barley, as its presence among oats is not 

 readily observed. It resembles the cultivated oat in 

 general appearance, but the stem is smooth, with hairy 

 nodes or joints, and the spikelets, i inch long, contain 

 two to three flowers, the flowering glume of each bear- 

 ing a long, stout, bent and twisted awn, the base of 



