The Book of Grasses 



rising above the tall marsh grasses, seem touched with frosted 

 silver. 



This grass blooms in late summer but is not in its greatest 

 beauty until September and October, as the silky hairs clothing 

 the flowers are scarcely perceptible until the spikelets begin to 

 ripen; then the hairs spread widely, and the leafy stems, sometimes 

 more than ten feet tall, are surmounted by feathery panicles which 

 resemble the soft plumes of Pampas Grass and remain until after 

 the first snows. 



The Reed, with its long rootstocks, is one of the many plants 

 used by Nature as she slowly changes the land's surface, and 

 transforms swamps and stagnant pools into fertile meadows. The 

 horizontal rootstocks, spreading far from the stem, form a densely 

 interwoven mat that holds mud and decaying vegetation and so 

 affords a resting place for water-loving plants, which in turn are 

 held and give firmer soil to marsh plants and grasses. Day after 

 day these transformations are in process around us, but so slowly 

 does Nature perform her work that decades pass without appre- 

 ciable change. 



The Old World has demanded more utilitarian service from her 

 plants than we have, and although the Reed is sometimes culti- 

 vated in American gardens it is seldom used, as it is in Europe, to 

 cover the roofs of farmhouses and outbuildings with a durable, 

 water-proof thatch. 



Reed. Phragmiies communis Trin. 



Perennial, from stout rootstocks. 



Stem 5-15 ft. tall, stout, leafy, erect. Sheaths loose. Ligule a ring of 

 short hairs. Leaves 6'-24' long, ^'-2' wide. 



Panicle 6'-i5' long, pyramidal, many-flowered. Spikelets 3-6-flowered, 

 5"-8" long, lowest flower often staminate. Outer scales acute, un- 

 equal, flowering scales awl-shaped, pointed, thrice the length of the 

 palet. Rachilla bearing long, silky hairs which equal the flowering 

 scales in length. Stamens 3. 



Borders of ponds and rivers, and in coast marshes. July to September. 



Throughout the United States and in southern Canada. 



TALL RED-TOP 



In dry fields, where the chief grasses of late summer are low, 

 bushy Panic-grasses, slender Paspalums, and spreading tufts of 

 Eragrostis, Tall Red-top, often shoulder-high and bearing long, 



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