MELICA. 



291 



broad, blunt, wedge-shaped, seven-ribbed; palea broad, 

 blunt, with two green marginal ribs, delicately fringed; the 

 second floret is placed on a short smooth footstalk; the 

 rudimentary floret is placed on a long footstalk, but does not 

 project beyond the glumes. 



A simple and very elegant grass, with pale green fo- 

 liage and spikelets so broad and so brightly tinted as to 

 seem like lily flowers. The 

 raceme is slender, and bends 

 gracefully when in flower, 

 and all tHe spikelets are more 

 or less nodding, so that the 

 form of the plant is one of 

 perfect grace. But in seed 

 the culm and rachis become 

 much stifler, and the beauty 

 of the plant is soon lost. 



The situations where the 

 Mountain Melick grows are 

 such as would lend beauty 

 to a plant with fewer claims 

 of its own. In alpine woods, 

 among gay vetches, and by the side of the nodding 

 heads of the water-avens, overshadowed by wild Guelder- 

 rose and spindle-tree, and sheltered by birch and 

 alder; the Mountain Melick makes one of a goodly 

 brotherhood. 



In the north of England, within sight of the towers 

 of Fountains Abbey, and in the romantic glades about 

 Rokeby, as well as in the Highland homes still more 

 dear to Scotland's poet, the Mountain Melick flourishes 

 luxuriantly. This grass is to be found also in the woods 

 of Westmoreland, Cumberland, and Cheshire. 



u2 



