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Genus 11. STIPA. Feather Grass. 



Gen. Char. Spikelets stalked, sub-racemose, one-flowered, erect. 

 Glumes two, nearly equal, membranaceous, enclosing the 

 flower, not compressed. Palese cartilaginous, hardening and 

 investing the ripening fruit ; outer one convolute, cylindrical, 

 terminated by a very long twisted and knee-bent awn. 



Between thirty and forty species of this genus have been dis- 

 tinguished. They are of no agricultural value, being generally 

 grasses of rigid texture, unpalatable to cattle, and containing little 

 nutritive matter : the grain of S. pennata is, however, said to pro- 

 duce a flower equalling that of Rice. The tough stems of S, tena- 

 cissima are used in Spain for making ropes, baskets, &c., a prac- 

 tice of great antiquity in the Peninsula, where other grasses with 

 flexible stems are employed for similar purposes. 



The name, from the Greek stupe, tow made from flax or hemp, 

 by an arbitrary transition from fibre to down or feather, applies 

 especially to Stipa pennata, the typical species, a reputed but very 

 equivocal member of our EngUsh Flora. 



Stipa pennata. True Feather Grass. Plate XXII. 



Leaves rigid, setaceous, grooved. Floral awn very long, twisted 

 at the lower part, knee-bent, feathered above the knee to the apex. 



Stipa pennata, Linnaus. E. B. 1356 j ed. 2. additional plate 160*, 

 not described in the text. Generally adopted. 



Recorded in Ray's Synopsis as having been found by Dr. Rich- 

 ardson and Thomas Lawson, on the limestone rocks overhanging 

 the little valley of Longsleadale, about six miles north of Kendal, 

 in Westmoreland. We have not any authenticated instance of its 

 discovery by later collectors on that spot or elsewhere in Britain, a 

 circumstance which, of course, renders the fact of its existence, at 

 any time, as an indigenous or even naturalized wild plant of this 

 country, very doubtful ; and, without impugning the veracity of 

 the botanists above named, we can only account for its Westmore- 

 land habitat, at the period of their researches, by the very likely 

 accident of a seed, so admirably constructed for transportation by 

 the wind, having found its way thither from some garden. The 

 slender leaves grow in dense tufts, as do those of most Alpine 

 grasses, to the length of a foot or more ; they are channeled on the 

 upper side, smooth and glossy. The roots strike very deeply into 

 the soil, or into the crevices of rocks, from which latter it is diffi- 

 cult to extricate them. The flowering stems seldom attain more 

 than the height of a foot, and are invested by leaves to the top, 



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