IMPROVEMENT OF GRASS LAND 223 



Quaking, Toddling, or Totter Grass. This grass has 

 solitary, upright stems i to i^ feet high, creeping 

 below. Flowering takes place in June. Quaking 

 Grass is a typical weed of poor pastures and meadows 

 on light dry soils, and is a useless constituent of the 

 herbage. Where it is abundant or even moderately 

 plentiful, good dressings of manure should be applied 

 to the land. 



Soft Brome Grass (Bromus mollis L.) is an annual 

 or biennial weed, which is frequently very plentiful in 

 meadows and leys, in water meadows, and by road- 

 sides, but is not often found in old pastures. It is a 

 handsome grass (Fig. 69), with beautiful lance-shaped 

 downy spikelets containing five or more flowers, each 

 flowering glume being awned. This grass flowers: early, 

 between May and June, and its seeds, by means of 

 which it is propagated, are shed in the hay-field by June. 

 Soft Brome Grass is useless to stock, and replaces better 

 grasses. In meadows it may be reduced by early 

 mowing for two or three years to cut it before seeding 

 takes place, and it is reduced in pastures by a dressing 

 of mixed nitrogenous and mineral manures. 



Sterile or Barren Brome Grass (Bromus sterilis L.) 

 is an erect annual, about 2 feet high, with narrow 

 leaves, and very large open nodding panicles with 

 drooping branches ; the spikelets, at the end of long 

 slender pedicels, are about i inch in length, slender 

 awns adding perhaps another inch. This grass is 

 common by roadsides, fences and hedges, in fields and 

 waste places. Cutting before seeding in June and July 

 will reduce it where troublesome. 



Meadow Barley Grass (Hordeum pratense Huds.) is 

 a perennial with slender stems i to 2 feet high, and 

 having a general resemblance to a diminutive specimen 

 of ordinary barley. The spikes are i to 3 inches long, 



