342 HORTUS GRAMINEUS WOBURNENSIS. 



measure, the meaning of the term stoloniferous. Sir Humphry 

 Davy says, that the concrete sap stored up in the joints of these 

 grasses renders them a good food, even in winter. The weight of 

 nutritive matter contained in this grass, at the time the seed is 

 ripe, is superior to that afforded at the time it is in flower, in the 

 proportion of 7 to 10. 



It is the most common grass on deep bogs, even where they are 

 subject to be under water for six months in the year. It is a 

 diminutive plant, very unlike the produce of such soils ; the leaves 

 seldom attain to more than two or three inches in length. Hares 

 crop the foliage in the spring. The smallness of the produce, 

 even when cultivated under the most favourable circumstances, 

 affords a sufficient proof of its unworthiness to be regarded by the 

 Farmer, in any other light than that of a weed which indicates a 

 soil capable of being improved, so as to produce the most valuable 

 grasses by artificial irrigation. It may be propagated to any ex- 

 tent by seeds, or by planting the stolones, or decumbent-rooting 

 shoots. 



Flowers in the second and third weeks of July, and ripens the 

 seed about the middle of August. 



AGROSTIS alba. White Bent. 



Specific character : Panicle spreading, meagre, branches rough- 

 ish; culms decumbent; root creeping. Fig. 1. Floret, mag. 

 2. Inner husks and germen. Hort. Gram. Fol. 229. 

 Obs. Culms ascending at the base, afterwards bent down ; 

 panicle, when in flower, widely spreading ; branches rough, 

 slender ; leaves rough ; outer valve of the calyx serrulated 

 from the middle to the top ; inner valve with a few minute 

 serrulatures towards the top ; corolla awnless. It is distin- 

 guished at first sight from the Agrostis repens, Agrostis stolo- 

 nifera, and its varieties, and from the Agrostis palustris, by its 

 decumbent culms and thin meagre panicle. The Flora Ger- 

 manica includes under this name five varieties. The present 

 plant agrees with the Agrostis vulgaris in having one valve of 

 the corolla only serrulated, smooth, and without any rudiment 

 of an awn. This is a common variety of the Agrostis alba on 

 poor wet clayey soils ; that figured in the English Botany is 

 much larger in every respect. E. Bot. 1189. 

 The powerful creeping root of the Agrostis alba (not the A. alba 

 of Linnaeus, but of Withering), compared to the fibrous root and 



