The Book of Grasses 



SILVERY HAIR-GRASS 



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Silvery Hair-grass is a tiny annual that has 

 become only locally abundant since its accidental 

 introduction from Europe. It is occasionally 

 found in the sandy soil of waste fields, and in 

 dry places by the wayside, where the Slender 

 Fescue strives with small success to draw life 

 from the unpromising ground. Silvery Hair- 

 grass is of slender growth, and its bristle-like 

 leaves resemble those of a small plant of Wavy 

 Hair-grass, which blooms a few weeks later. 



Sand-growing annuals, like those near the 

 ^ deserts, are of rapid growth, and take advantage 

 of a spring shower to grow, bloom, and mature 

 their seeds in as short a time as possible. 

 Therefore the Silvery Hair-grass early lifts its 

 spreading panicles from the ground and opens 

 the purplish spikelets for a day. It is rarely 

 a foot in height, and often much less than that, 

 one of the smallest of the grasses that bloom in 

 the Eastern States, and silvery, as its name 

 implies, as the colour fades from the blossoms, 

 and the empty scales, shining and translucent, 

 remain on the panicles long after the ripened 

 seeds, with their adherent flowering scales, have 

 floated away on the breeze. 



Silvery Hair-grass 

 Aira caryophyllea 



Silvery Hair-grass. Aira caryophyllea L. 



Annual. Naturalized from Europe. 



Stem 4'- 1 2' tall, slender, erect. Ligule about 1" long. 

 Leaves bristle-form, §'-2' long. 



Panicle \'-^' long, very open, branches hair-like, spike- 

 let-bearing toward the extremities. Spikelets 2- 

 flowered, \"-\\" long, green and rose-purple, turn- 

 ing silvery and translucent in fading. Scales 4; 

 outer scales acute, equal; flowering scales acute, 

 2-toothed, awned; awns slender, 2" long or less. 

 Stamens 3. 



Dry soil and waste places. May to July. 



Massachusetts to Virginia, also on the Pacific Coast. 



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