Illustrated Descriptions of the Grasses 



Among our common wayside grasses there are few more beau- 

 tiful than the Rough Hair-grass, with its shining stems and 

 wonderfully deli- 

 cate panicles which 

 glisten in the sun- 

 light like purple 

 cobwebs. When 

 the Fescues are 

 past, and the Red- 

 top is in its glory of 

 midsummer colour- 

 ing, the slender 

 stems of this grass 

 droop by the way- 

 side and may be 

 passed a score of 

 times unnoticed, 

 for, although the 

 flowering-heads are 

 often a foot and a 

 half long and half 



as broad, the widely spreading branches are so 

 infinitely fine that the panicles seem to have 

 gathered "fern-seed," since they so nearly "walk 

 invisible." To see the plant in its greatest beauty 

 one should seek an upland plain where the land- 

 scape gardening of Nature has planted the dark 

 green of bush-clover and tick-trefoil against the 

 summer grasses. Here, where the Wild Oat-grass 

 was earlier abundant, and where later the Beard- 

 grasses will endure throughout the autumn, arelarge 

 tufts of Rough Hair-grass — the whole fiowering- 

 head, stem, branch, and spikelet, burned to rose- 

 purple by the July sun. Before the panicles ex- 

 pand they are sometimes gathered and sold as 

 "Silk-grass," but the name of Fly-away Grass is 

 more appropriate as the seeds ripen, for the light 

 panicles are soon broken by the wind and drift over 

 the fields as the earliest tumble-weed. 



The Red-top and its varieties are among the 



119 



Rough Hair-grass 

 Agrostis hyanalis 



