WILD OAT GRASS. 123 



account of its growing in tufts, clusters, or hassocks. 

 Cattle seldom touch it. Natural to stiff or marshy bot- 

 toms, where the water stands. Flowers in June. 



Purple Alpine Hair Grass (Aira atropurpurea) is 

 another species found on the top of the White Moun- 

 tains, in New Hampshire, growing from eight to fifteen 

 inches high, with flat and rather wide leaves. 



Water Hair Grass (Aira aquatica), Fig. 95. — This 

 grass Mr. Curtis calls the sweetest of the British 

 grasses, and equal to any foreign one. Its stems and 

 leaves, when green, have a sweet and agreeable taste, 

 like that of liquorice. Water fowls are said to be very 

 fond of the seeds and the fresh green shoots, and cattle 

 eat it very readily. It is strictly an aquatic, but can 

 be cultivated on imperfectly drained bogs. 



48. Danthonia. 



Lower pale seven to nine nerved, with a flat and spi- 

 rally twisting awn made of the three middle nerves. In 

 other respects nearly like Avena. 



Wild Oat Grass, White Top, Old Fog {Danthonia 

 spicata), Fig. 96, is common in dry, sunny pastures, 

 with a stem one foot high, slender, with short leaves, 

 narrow sheaths, bearded ; panicle simple ; spikelets 

 seven-flowered ; lower palea broadly ovate, loosely 

 hairy on the back, longer than its awl-shaped teeth — 

 perennial. Flowers in June. It is called white top in 

 some localities, but is not the grass most commonly 

 known by that name. Its spikelet appears magnified in 

 Fig. 97; its lower pale, in Fig. 98 ; its upper pale, in Fig. 

 99; its seed, in Fig. 100. 



49. Trisbtum. 



Spikelets two to seven flowered, often in a contracted 

 panicle; lower pale compressed, keeled, with a bent awn 



