64 CROP GRASS. 



or five , leaves hairy at the base. It is a trouble- 

 some annual weed, introduced from Europe. Found 

 also in Illinois. 



22. Elbusine. Grop Orass. 



Spikelets two to six flowered, overlapping each other 

 in close spikes on one side of a flattish rachis; spikes dig- 

 itate, clustered ; glumes awnless and pointless ; stamens 

 three ; palea awnless and pointless. 



Ceop Grass, Crab Grass, Wire Grass, Crow's-foot 

 (Meusine Indica). — Stems ascending, flattened, branch- 

 ing at the base ; spikes two to five, greenish. 



This is an annual, and flowers through the season, 

 growing, from eight to fifteen inches high, and forming a 

 fine green carpeting in lawns and yards. It is indige- 

 nous in Mississippi, Alabama, and adjoining states, and 

 serves for hay, grazing, and turning under as a fertilizer. 

 It grows there with such luxuriance, in many sections, as 

 never to require sowing, and yields a good crop where 

 many of the more northern grasses would fail. 



23. Leptochloa. Slender Grass. 



Spikelets three to many flowered, loosely spiked on 

 one side of a long, thread-like rachis ; glumes membra- 

 naceous, keeled, sometimes awl-pointed ; lower palea 

 three-nerved, and larger than the upper. Stamens two 

 or three. 



Pointed Slender Grass {Leptochloa mucronata) is an 

 annual, growing from two to three feet high, and flow- 

 ering in August. Sheaths hairy; spikes from twenty 

 to forty, two to four inches long, in a long panicle-like 

 raceme ; glumes pointed, about equalling the three or 

 four awnless flowers. Found in fields from Virginia to 

 Illinois, and southward. 



Clustering Slender Grass {Leptochloa fascicularis). 

 — Spikelets seven to eleven flowered, longer than the 



