HOKTUS GRAMINEUS WOB URN'ENSI.S. 155 



FESTUCA duriuscula. Hard Fescue. 



Specific character : Panicle unilateral, spreading ; florets longer 

 than their awns ; stem round, upper leaves flat, root fibrous. 

 Sm. Engl. Bot. i. p. 141. Fig. 1. Calyx, with unequal valves. 

 2. Floret, or corolla and anthers. 3. Germen, or rudiment of 

 the future seed, and the feathered cylindrical stigmas. 

 Obs. Sir James Edward Smith, in his English Botany, ob- 

 serves, "that in this genus it is hard to say what may, or what 

 may not be a species;" and, with his usual force and clearness, 

 he reduces the Festuca glauca, Festuca glabra, Festuca Cambrica, 

 Festuca duriuscula, and Festuca rubra, of Hudson, Lightfoot, 

 Withering, Winch, and Stillingfleet, &c. into one species. 

 All these grasses vary much from change of soil and situation ; 

 the flowers are particularly apt to vary in number, as well as 

 in the length of their awns : there is one character, however, 

 which I have never found to change under any variety of 

 culture, which is the creeping root ; and this is also an agri- 

 cultural character of distinction which is never to be lost sight 

 of, as it always produces a specific effect upon the soil, very 

 distinct indeed from that of the fibrous-rooted kinds. The 

 botanical characters given by the learned, being, therefore, 

 insufficient to distinguish these grasses, (which I have no 

 doubt will be equally so, with many of the present specific 

 distinctions of plants, when discoveries have been sufficiently 

 extended over every country,) I will here consider them of 

 two distinct species the creeping rooted, and the fibrous- 

 rooted : noting their varieties from other parts of the plant. 

 This will be sufficient for the purposes of the Agriculturist';* 

 or, at least, to practical men the discriminating characters 

 will be much less embarrassing, and obviate, in a great mea- 

 sure, in these plants the danger of mistake. See Sm. Engl. 

 Fl. i. p. 141 ; E. Bot. 470-2056; With. Still. Curtis. Lond. 



Root fibrous. Perennial. 



Experiments. At the time t>f flowering, the produce from a 

 clayey loam with manure, is 



Produce per Acre, 

 dr. qr. Ibs. 



Grass, 27 oz. The produce per acre is - 18376 14 



80 dr. of grass weigh, when dry - 36 } 



The produce of the space, ditto - 194 1J 3 



The weight lost by the produce of one acre in drying 10106 4 8 



