GRAMINEAE (GRASS FAMILY) 61 



excellent hay when cut before seeding. Poultry also eat the 

 seeds without any bad effects. (Fig. 30.) 



Culms two to four feet tall, simple, erect, smooth. Sheaths 

 overlapping, smooth ; blades six inches to a foot long, about a 

 quarter-inch wide, smooth below but somewhat rough above, 

 deep green. Spikes four to eight inches long, the rachis flexuous 

 and grooved on its sides, the spikelets sessile and attached to the 

 rachis with their edges resting in the alternate curves ; spikelets 

 five- to seven-flowered, the lemma sometimes awned, sometimes 

 not ; the glume at the base of each spikelet equaling or exceeding 

 it in length, looking like a bract in the axil of which the spikelet 

 sits. Seed slender, brown, boat-shaped, with a deep groove on the 

 inner side, appearing somewhat like a slim, hard grain of wheat ; 

 the palea is closely adherent to it, making it about as heavy as a 

 kernel of wheat and difficult to separate from that grain when 

 threshed with it. 



Means of control 



Sow clean seed. Grain containing Darnel should not be milled 

 but should be fed to cattle or poultry ; or the crop should be cut 

 green and used as hay. Darnel-infested land should not again be 

 used for grain until the rotation has included some cultivated 

 crops. 



QUACK-GRASS 



Agropyron repens, Beauv. 



Other English names: Couch-grass, Wheat-grass, Scutch-grass, 



Twitch-grass, Quitch-grass, Dog-grass, Devil's Grass, Whickens. 

 Introduced. Perennial. Propagates by seeds and by creeping, 



jointed rootstocks. 

 Time of bloom: June. 

 Seed-time: July. 

 Range: The whole of North America except the extreme north. 



Most injurious in the United States from New England westward 



to Minnesota. 

 Habitat: Fields, roadsides, and waste places. 



If it were put to a vote, perhaps most farmers would name 

 Quack-grass as the most obnoxious of its tribe ; yet it makes good 

 hay and two crops a year of it, is sweet pasture grazing which cattle 



