THE FARMERS' REGISTER. 



569 



spikes of the plant resemble those of Digitaria so 

 closely as to be easily taken for a species of the 

 latter, so that a person observing the flowers, 

 without attending to the general habit of the 

 plant, would be likely to pronounce it " crab 

 grasSy'^ the name applied here to the diHereni 

 species ol Digilaria, two of which are common, 

 the D. sanguinalis and D. fililbrmis. 



M. TUOMEY. 



Hemarks. 

 The account above sufficiently points out a 

 very great mistake into which I had lallen in 

 regard to " wire grass ;" and my confident as- 

 seriion of that mistaken opinion served to mis- 

 lead ihose much better inlormed, and who knew 

 wire grass only by loose description. At page 

 115 of this volume, in the commencement of my 

 account of the wire grass of lower Virginia, which 

 Dr. Darlington had spoken of as the poa com- 

 pressa, it was stated (as a correction of his mis- 

 lake) that the wire grass was the couch grass of 

 England, or irilicum repens. I was long ago 

 led into this error by the many general notices 

 of couch grass by English writers, which seemed 



^ to apply exactly to wire grass ; and I was con- 

 firmed 'n ihe mistake by having made the inquiry 

 of an intelligent larmer, who was a native of 

 and had been a cultivator in Great Britain, and 

 being answered that these grasses were the same. 

 Upon showing the wire grass to Mr. Tuomey, 

 he saw at once that it was not the triticum repens, 

 of which he had a dried specimen in his herba- 

 rium which he gathered on the Eastern Shore 

 of Maryland, and which is altogether different in 

 appearance. His views, presented above, and 

 ray previous remarks at page 115, leave nothing 

 for me to supply here except the correction of my 

 own errors, and omissions. 



In the account referred to, it was stated, rather 

 too broadly, that this grass " will scarcely grow 



> except where there is enough of lime to consti- 

 tute a good and fertile soil." There should have 

 been stated a further exception, viz : that on the 

 most sandy and dry soils, which qualities of soil are 

 very favorable to this grass, it may be sometimes 

 found in scattered and feeble growth, even though 

 the soil be acid, or very deficient in the calcareous 

 ingredient. 



The power of vitality in the wire grass is very 

 remarkable. Every cultivator of good light 

 loams, or rich sandy soils, in lower Virginia, knows 

 the great difKculty of killing the roots by plough- 

 ing, harrowing, and even by exposure on the sur- 

 face of the ploughed earth. And I have known 

 the gathered and removed roots, which had been 

 kept sunk in a deep pool of water, in the middle 

 of a barn-yard, remaining a long time, and being 

 part of the time covered there with several feet 



, thickness of the barn-yard litter, to vegetate when 

 taken up and exposed again on the surface of the 

 ground. E. R. 



DARNEL — LOLIUM TEMULENTUM. 



Synonymes. — Lolium temulentum, — Darnel and 

 Bearded darnel, in Eogland—Spelt, in lower 

 Virginia. 



Botanical description. 



Lolium. Spikelets many flowered, alternate, 

 Vol. IX.-55 



distant, sessile at right angles with, or the edge to 

 the rachis. Glume a single bract, except at the 

 terminal spikeiet, where there are two. Palece her- 

 baceous, nearly equal ; lower one awnless, or 

 sometimes with a short bristle at the tip. — Nutt. 

 Gen. 



The L. temulentum can be readily distinguish- 

 ed from the L. perenne [rye or ray grass] by the 

 glume which in the L. temulentum is longer than 

 the spikelets, in L. perenne shorter. M. T. 



General Remarks. 



Darnel, or spelt, is a hardy annual, that grows 

 much in the same nrtanner and under like circum- 

 stances with wheat, rises to about the same height 

 on ordinary and poor soils, and ripens at the same 

 time. The plant and the seeds are larger than 

 those of the English rye-grass, which otherwise 

 very much resembles spelt. The seeds also, as 

 enveloped in their close and inseparable husk (or 

 glume,) are nearly of the same size with Ihe 

 smaller grains of wheat, and not much varying 

 from wheat in epeeific gravity. Therefore they 

 cannot be entirely separated from wheat, either 

 by the fan or the screen ; and this, added to the 

 peculiar deleterious qualities of the grain of spelt 

 as food, cause it to be the worst weed that infests 

 the crop of wheat. Luckily it is but a new im- 

 portation to the United States, and is known as 

 yet but in few places, it is common in Europe, 

 and its poisonous qualities were known to the 

 Romans, as appears from a passage in Virgil.* 

 Still, darnel does not seem to be much regarded 

 as an injurious weed in England ; and therefore 

 it may be inferred that it is better suited to our 

 warmer climate, or to our bad tillage. Where it 

 has been permitted to become abundant, it is, aa 

 the writer has fully experienced, the worst of all 

 the weeds that injure wheat by the admixture of 

 their seeds. 



I remember well that the first plant of spelt I 

 ever saw, was about 30 years ago, in the county 

 of Prince George. Its novelty induced me to 

 gather the bunch, as a rare and beautiful, and 

 what perhaps might prove a valuable forage 

 grass. It must then have been very scarce in 

 that neighborhood where it has since become, on 

 particular farms, so abundant, and is no where 

 entirely wanting. But though so recently a 

 stranger, spelt has gained long ago the same 

 character that cheat {bromus secalinus) possesses, 

 of being the degenerated product of wheat. In 

 addition to all other reasons against this belief, 

 it would seem as enough to overthrow it, that 

 this supposed conversion of wheat to spelt could 

 have occurred on but few and limited locali- 

 ties — and if such a change took place any where, 



* " Infelix lolium," &c., noxious lolium, &c. — Gear. 

 lib. i., I. 154. 



"The bearded darnel is frequent in some countries, 

 but it is comparatively rare in this [England], It has 

 been condemned as a poisonous plant for more than 

 2000 years." — Low's Practical .Agriculture. 



" There is but a solitary instance alleged of the un- 

 wholesomeness of the seeds in the entire family of the 

 grasses, viz.: those of the darnel, {Lolium temuleri' 

 turn, L.,) a common weed in many parts of Europe, 

 but scarcely known in the United States ; and even in 

 this case, the deleterious effects are probably exagge- 

 rated." — Darlington's Essay on Grasses. 



