120 THE HAIR GRASSES. 



Sinclair calls this grass the sugar-cane of Great 

 Britain. It contains a large quantity of saccharine 

 matter, and it is probable that mixed with beach grass, 

 as it is in Holland, it would be valuable to cut up and 

 mix with common hay for winter feed. It is used pre- 

 cisely as beach grass is here, to prevent the encroach- 

 ments of the sea, and to arrest the drifting sand. It 

 was introduced by the Patent Office, and cultivated in 

 various parts of the country. 



BOTTLE-BRUSH GRASS (Elymus Hystrix) is found rather 

 commonly in moist, rocky woodlands, and along shaded 

 banks of streams, and may be known by its loose, up- 

 right spike and spreading spikelets, smooth sheaths and 

 leaves, smoothish flowers tipped with an awn three times 

 their length. Flowers in July. It is referred by Gray 

 to the genus Gymnostichum, as it differs from other 

 species of Elymus, in having no glumes. The differ- 

 ence is slight, as the glumes are often more or less 

 developed. The spike has the appearance of a bottle- 

 brush, when ripe. 



47. AIRA. Hair Grasses. 



Two-flowered spikelets, in an open, diffuse panicle ; 

 flowers both perfect, shorter than the glumes, hairy at 

 the base ; lower palea three to five nerved, awned on 

 the back; grain oblong, smooth. 



WOOD HAIR GRASS, or COMMON HAIR GRASS (Aira 

 flexuosa\ is a common grass on our dry and rocky hills 

 and roadsides. Stems slender, one to two feet high, 

 nearly naked ; leaves dark green, often curved, bristle- 

 formed; branches of the panicle hairy, spreading, mostly 

 in pairs; lower palea slightly toothed ; awn starting near 

 the base, bent in the middle, longer than the glumes, 

 which are purplish. Perennial. Flowers in June. This 

 plant is sometimes found thirty-five hundred feet above 



