AGEICULTUEAL SPECIES OF BENT GRASSES. 5 



ciUata Vill., a noncultivated species mostly without stolons, because 

 a specimen of that is in the Lionaean herbarium and because some of 

 the references relate in. part to the latter species; but the more con- 

 servative judgment of other botanists is that the name properly 

 belongs with the stoloniferous grass that is native about Upsala, 

 Sweden, there known as Kryp-hven. 



In commercial use, and formerly also in botanical pubhcations, 

 appears the name Agrostis dispar Michaux, described from South 

 Carolina. Hitchcock has examined Michaux's original specimen and 

 pronounces it the same as ordinary redtop. 



Agrostis capiUaris is still another botanical name attached by 

 some seedsmen to redtop. This name as used originally by Linnaeus 

 in 1762 is based on various older descriptions, iiicluding one of his 

 own pubhshed in the Flora Lapponica in 1737, The evidence 

 regarding the identity of this plant is much involved, and modern 

 Swedish botanists no longer consider it to be a Scandinavian plant. 

 In any event the evidence is clear that the name can not be apphed 

 to redtop. 



The name marsh bent is also used occasionally in the seed trade, 

 apphed to redtop. This name apparently arose as an anghcizing of 

 Agrostis palustris Huds., which, according to a letter from Dr. Otto 

 Stapf, is based on a plant not distinguishable from Agrostis alba of 

 Linnseus's herbarium. However, various Enghsh botanists use the 

 name marsh bent in connection with a stoloniferous form. 



Another common name apphed to redtop, especially in the Southern 

 States, and formerly at least in Pennsylvania, is herd's-grass. This 

 name appears in agricultural hterature as apphed to redtop as early 

 as 1804 (18, p. 192-202). Inasmuch as the name herd's-grass or 

 herd-grass was applied in New England to timothy, botanical and 

 agricultural writers have commonly pointed out that the herd's-grass 

 of Pennsylvania and the Southern States is redtop. In Pennsylvania 

 usage the name herd's-grass was applied both to Agrostis alba and 

 to A. vulgaris, not only by agricultural writers, such as Mease (10), 

 but also by the Pennsylvania botanist Muhlenberg (11, p. 69). 

 Darlington (3, p. 10), however, restricts the name to Agrostis vulgaris. 

 Herd's-grass is still a common name for redtop in the Southern 

 States. 



On the whole it would seem best to drop the name Agrostis alba, 



because it was founded partly on Poa nemoralis, and to use as the 



botanical name of redtop the next older name, Agrostis palustris 



Huds. 



FIORIN. 



Fiorin is the common name of an Irish grass which was much 

 exploited as an agricultural crop by Dr. WOliam Richardson, of Moy, 

 Ireland, in the early part of the nineteenth century. This grass was 



