140 BRITISH GRASSES. 



month. The Highlands of Scotland are the only Bri- 

 tish home of this alpine grass. It is essentially a 

 northern plant, and is indigenous in Greenland and all 

 across Arctic Asia and America. According to Mr. 

 Bentham, it reappears in the Antarctic regions, but is 

 unknown in Scandinavia. 



5. Alopecurus bulbosus, Sm. Bulbous Foxtail. 



Root perennial, tuberous ; stem solitary, scarcely a foot 

 long, very simple, erect, a little decumbent at the base, 

 smooth, striated ; joints four, wide apart ; leaves smooth, 

 the radical ones few and short, the stem-leaves narrow, the 

 uppermost rather longer than its sheath, the others about 

 equal to the sheaths ; ligule short and striated, that of 

 upper sheath twice as long as broad ; panicle erect, cylin- 

 drical, an inch to an inch and a half long ; spikelets nume- 

 rous, flattened; outer glumes equal, acute, awnless, sepa- 

 rated at the base, hairy on the keels and lateral ribs; 

 flowering glume shorter, emarginated and awned at the 

 base, abrupt at summit; awn rough on the upper part, 

 smooth and tortuous below ; filaments hair-like, short ; an- 

 thers cloven ; ovary oval ; styles two, united ; stigmas two, 

 feathery. 



The bulbous root of this grass affords a distinctive 

 feature, patent even to the casual observer; the bulb 

 emits fibres from its lower part, and has a brown striated 

 membrane. The culm is solitary, at first inclining to 

 the decumbent habit like the last two species, and then 

 ascending. But it differs from A. geuiculatus in its 

 longer, narrower, and less hairy florets; from A. agrestis 

 in the smoothness of its stem and sheaths, and the 

 bluntness of its flowering glumes ; and from A.pratensis 



