134 



SUMMER 



CAT5TAIL OR 



TIMOTHY 



the heads are hardly less decorative one by one than they are 

 in the mass. But they want for the most part popular names. 

 These are more often given to 

 plants or parts of plants that have 

 some curious, for preference some 

 grotesque, likeness to a different 

 thing. The male catkin of the 

 hazel is a lamb's-tail. The female 

 flower is nameless. The seed of 

 the clematis has earned the plant 

 the nickname of old-man's-beard. 

 One of the least graceful of the 

 grasses is called fox-tail, and the 

 likeness to a fox's brush is both 

 close and absurd. The crested 

 dog's-tail, one of the most salient 

 grasses, is still more grotesque. 



* ^sw mi iif i The totter - grass ' with its heavy 



v!f T^Kw- \II ff I heart-shaped head on the slenderest 

 thread, outdoes the aspen and 

 prompts experiment. But there is 

 no popular, not even an English 

 name, for many of the filigree grasses 

 of most delicate pattern. Daintiest 

 of all, perhaps, are the varieties of 

 poa that fall in a fine fringe, like 

 refined miniatures of the pampas. 

 Most of us are ignorant of these, 

 while we know well the stiff and 

 woolly 'Timothy.' The more grot- 

 esque is the more salient here as in 

 much English popular art. The grasses have evaded also 

 the poets. Tennyson's ' Froth-fly on the fescue ' is a great 



