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FLOWERS OF THE SEA-COAST 



Lyme Grass is a familiar seashore grass which forms quite a feature 

 along the coast. It grows on sandy shores associated with Hedgehog 

 Grass, Seaside Manna Grass, Squirrel Tail Grass, Sand Sedge, 

 Common Sea Rush, and other maritime favourites of the botanist. 



The stems are robust, smooth, round, and give rise to soboles or 

 underground trailing shoots. The leaves are broad, rigid, straight, 

 and erect, with smooth sheaths, which are furrowed, with a short ligule. 



The flowers are in an upright, dense 

 spike, with 3-flowered spikelets, and downy. 

 The lower and upper ones are in pairs, 

 the intermediate ones in 3's with a flat 

 rachis. The glumes are downy, lanceo- 

 late, not longer than the spikelets. The 

 plant is 3-6 ft. in height. It flowers in 

 July. The plant is perennial, propagated 

 by soboles. 



Lyme Grass is anemophilous, with 

 spikelets in two rows, 2-6 flowers in each. 

 There are 3 stamens, and the 2 stigmas 

 are feathery and subsessile. The fruit is 

 attached to the palea, and the glume awn- 

 less, but readily dispersed by the wind. 



The plant is a halophyte, addicted to a 

 saline soil, being likewise arenophilous and 

 found in sand soil. 



A fungus, Ustilago hypodytes, infests it. 

 Three moths, the Lyme Grass (Tapino- 



stola elymi), Shore Wainscot (Leucania littoralis], and the Rustic 

 Shoulder-knot (Apamea basilinea), are found upon it. 



Elymus, Dioscorides, is the Greek word for a kind of millet. The 

 second Latin name refers to the sandy habitat. 



The plant is called Narrow Bent, Mother of Bent, Lyme Grass. 

 As a littoral plant it is valuable in binding together the shifting 

 sands on the sea-coast. It contains a large percentage (30%) of sugar. 

 ESSENTIAL SPECIFIC CHARACTERS: 



347. Elymus arenarius, L. Soboliferous, stem tall, erect, leaves 

 broad, long, Iigule short, spike dense, erect, glumes not as long as the 

 spikelets, downy. 



Photo. Messrs. Flatters & Gar 



LYME GRASS (Elymus arenarius, L.) 



