62 FODDER AND PASTURE PLANTS. 



CANADIAN BLUE GRASS {Poa compressa L.) 



Plate 9; Seed, Plate 26, Fig. 15. 



Other English names: Canada Blue Grass, English Blue Grass, Wire 

 Grass, Creeping Poa, Smaller Blue Grass, Virginia Blue Grass. 



Botanical description: Canadian Blue Grass is perennial. 

 The underground rootstock is extensively creeping, sending out 

 numerous branches in all directions. Where a plant has an oppor- 

 tunity to develop undisturbed for some years, it will generally form 

 a circular patch. The overground part of such a patch consists of 

 scattered stems and leafy shoots, making a dense sod more like a 

 continuous mat than a loose tuft. The stems are from one to two 

 feet tall, often knee-bent at the base. They are wiry, few leaved and 

 strongly flattened. No other cultivated species of the genus Poa 

 having flattened stems, Canadian Blue Grass may be recognized by 

 this peculiarity. The leaves are from one to three inches long, not 

 as broad and numerous as those of Kentucky Blue Grass. They 

 are bluish-green, sometimes quite glaucous. The flowers are in a 

 panicle unlike that of Kentucky Blue Grass. In the latter species 

 it is generally broadly pyramidal, the lower branches being numerous 

 at each joint. When in bloom the panicle of Canadian Blue Grass 

 is generally oblong, or narrowly egg-shaped, the branches being 

 short and only one or two from each joint. When flowering is over, 

 the panicle becomes contracted and narrow with erect branches. 

 The spikelets are like those of Kentucky Blue Grass and fertilization 

 takes place in the same way. 



Geographical distribution: Canadian Blue Grass is indigenous 

 to all European countries and to southwestern Asia. It was intro- 

 duced into North America and was found in Canada more than a 

 hundred years ago. It is now grown to a considerable extent in 

 southern and central Ontario. 



Habitat: It grows naturally in dry and sunny places, along 

 roadsides, on rocks and stony hills, and from the sea level to high up 

 in the mountains. It often occurs in poor, gravelly soil where other 

 plants find it difficult to get a foothold. 



Cultural conditions: In Canada, stiff rather sterile clay or 

 clay loam is the soil in which it is preferably grown, often because 

 it makes a fairly good growth where other plants fail to give a yield 

 worth mentioning. 



