ORNAMENTAL GRASSES. 71 



moist situation. This grass has the male and female 

 flowers on different plants. The latter is the one gene- 

 rally preferred, as best suited to our climate. It soon 

 developes a large circular tuft of leaves, which attain a 

 length of several feet, and bend outwards in the style so 

 much admired in the coronal ferns, until the abundance 

 of arching foliage resembles the graceful streams of a 

 fountain. From the centre of this arching group arise 

 a number of perpendicular culms, the apices at first 

 seeming only thickened, but shortly developing a folded 

 sheath, within which reposes the close-packed flower- 

 buds ; these culms shoot upwards with such rapidity, 

 that they have been known to grow an inch in twenty- 

 four hours, and they attain their full height of from five 

 to seven feet in September. Then the sheath opens 

 gradually, and the inflorescence emerges by degrees, at 

 first as a closely-packed head, then exhibiting its com- 

 plex structure of branches and buds, and by the end of 

 October developing its full glory of spreading panicle a 

 foot long, and numerous feathery flowers, so white and 

 glossy as to shine like silver, and so lightly mounted 

 on the slender branches that they wave and tremble 

 in every zephyr. The male plant differs in the foliage 

 being less graceful and the inflorescence later in opening. 

 The latter habit unfits the plant for out-door culture in 

 Britain, for it leaves little chance of the flowers being 

 perfected before the early frosts ; and the culms, being 

 then full of sap, are unable to stand the cold, and so pe- 

 rish before the flowers can expand. The best way of 

 utilizing the beauty of the male plant is to cut the un- 

 opened panicles before the coming of the frost. The 

 heads should then be dried, and the sheaths carefully 

 stripped off; the young florets lying snug within seem 



