117 WAYSIDE AND WOODLAND BLOSSOMS. 



indicated by pratensis, as it is a plant of the moor and dry pasture. Spikelets 

 half erect, six flowered. Leaves flat, or edges rolled inwards, smooth, hard and 

 rigid. Lower sheaths rough. Flowering glume, rough. Awn only slightly bent. 

 June and July. 



III. Downy Oat (A. pubesccns). Perennial. Spikelets half erect, two-flowered. 

 Leaves flatter than A. pratensis, downy ; sheaths very downy. Awns wider apart. 

 Dry pastures. June and July. 



The name is the old Latin term for oats and reeds. 



Mountain Ash or Rowan (Pyrus aucuparia). 



We have considered many members of the beautiful Rose 

 family already, but we have now a representative of another 

 branch of it the Wild-Apple section. The fruit of the Moun- 

 tain Ash is really a little apple. It has no relationship with the 

 Ash (Fraxinus, see page 135), but the mere resemblance of its 

 pinnate leaves has won the name. It is a low tree, growing 

 from twenty to forty feet in height. It flowers in May, the 

 creamy white blossoms being grouped in a cyme. The leaf is 

 divided pinnately into six, seven, or eight pairs of leaflets and 

 a terminal odd one ; each leaflet toothed, the mid-rib and nerves 

 hairy. The calyx also is hairy. The flowers are succeeded by 

 a cluster of bright scarlet tiny apples, with yellow flesh and a 

 three-celled hard " core " or endocarp. These are ripe in Sep- 

 tember, and are eagerly sought after by birds a fact of which 

 advantage has been taken by bird-catchers of all times and 

 places where the tree grows. It is used for the purpose of bait- 

 ing their horse-hair springes, whence it has got the name of 

 Fowler's Service-tree, and in the principal European countries 

 it bears a name of like import. Its folk-names in this country 

 alone make a long list : Quicken-tree, Quick-Beam, Wiggen, 

 Whichen, or Witcher, Wild Ash, Wild Service, Rowan, Roan, 

 or Roddan, Mountain Service, and other variations. Some of 

 these names are reminders of its supposed protective powers 

 against the machinations of witches and warlocks. " Witches 

 have no power where there is Rowan-tree wood." 

 Pyrus is the old Latin name for a pear-tree. 



