BRIZA. 257 



it excels most of the species which frequent the poor soils 

 where it finds its natural habitat. For the sake of its 

 beauty alone, we would fain mix some of its seed with 

 that of the Sheep's and Hard Fescue in hilly lands. 



Mr. Lees, in his ' Botany and Geology of Malvern/ 

 describes a curious variety of this grass with ovate 

 spikelets of about five abortive florets, and a flexuous 

 wiry panicle of few spikelets, which grows in the bog at 

 the base of the Worcestershire Beacon. 



Common throughout Britain, and in Norway, Sweden, 

 Prussia, Germany, France, Spain, and Portugal. 



2. Briza minor, Linn. Lesser Quake-grass. 



Root fibrous, small, annual ; stems upright, cylindrical, 

 roughish, about seven inches high, with minute bristles 

 pointing downwards, leafy, often branched at the base ; 

 joints five, the uppermost about the centre of the stem and 

 generally covered by the sheath ; leaves sheathing, erect, 

 lanceolate, acute, flat, striated, rough at their margin, of a 

 pleasant green colour ; sheaths striated, smooth, uppermost 

 one longer than its leaf; ligule lanceolate, very long, em- 

 bracing the stem, decurrent, adhering to the leaf above, very 

 tender ; panicle spreading widely, branches growing two 

 together, roughish, slender, forked, hair-like, green ; spike- 

 lets pendulous, trembling, triangular, smooth, beautifully 

 variegated with white and green, seven-flowered ; outer 

 glumes nearly equal, concave, very blunt, striated, mem- 

 branaceous at the edges, three-ribbed; flowering glumes 

 smaller than outer ones, broad, blunt, swollen at the back, 

 membranaceous at the margin, lobed at the base in front, 

 that of each floret gradually smaller to the apex of the spike- 

 let ; palea thin, flat, and ribbed at the margin with green. 



The roughness of the stem is not visible to the naked 

 eye ; but is sensible to the touch. 



s 



