138 



rally so disposed as to project from one side of the culm only, are so 

 strongly veined as to appear almost ribbed, and toward the flowering 

 season are usually split at the summit into numerous capillary segments. 

 Sheaths roughish, strongly striated. Ligule obsolete. Inflorescence 

 an exceedingly compound panicle, varying from a few inches to a foot 

 in length, the branches spreading, and more or less drooping to one 

 side. Spikelets very numerous, purplish-brown, containing three, 

 four, or five flowers, rarely six-flowered, the lowermost flower being 

 always barren or imperfectly stameniferous only. Grlumes very un- 

 equal, narrow, acuminate, the upper and larger one a little elevated on 

 a short pedicel. Flowers longer than the glumes. Palese unequal, 

 membranaceous ; the outer much the larger, terminating in a sharp 

 point, but not awned. Rachis of the fertile flowers bearing numerous 

 silky hairs, which gradually lengthen after the expansion of the spike- 

 lets, so as to give a beautiful silvery appearance to the panicle as the 

 seed ripens about the commencement of autumn. 



Perennial. Flowers in July. 



This is one of Nature's most valuable colonists, and is largely con- 

 cerned in the gradual conversion of swamps and fens, stagnant pools, 

 and other unwholesome spots in which water accumulates, into dry 

 land. In some of the low districts of the eastern counties of England, 

 it may be seen entirely overgrowing tracts of considerable extent, 

 called by the inhabitants reed-ronds. Such tracts, under the improving 

 hand of modern agriculture, are in a country like ours, yearly dis- 

 appearing as drainage progresses, and rich pasture or corn-fields re- 

 place them; but in lands yet unsubjeoted to cultivation, or those in 

 which the population is less advanced in the art of farming, the reed 

 itself more slowly fulfils the important change. De Luc, the celebrated 

 geologist of that name in the last century, has weU described the process 

 of land formation, as it may be termed, in which the grass before us is 

 the pioneer. In Brandenburg, Brunswick, and other parts of northern 

 Germany, he found at the bottom of every dale, a meadow on a sub- 

 soil of peat. Many of these meadows had, within the recollection of 

 old people in the vicinity, a pool of water in the middle of them ; while 

 in others such pools or lakes existed at the time of his visit, the ulti- 

 mate filling up of which seemed to be insured by the causes in action. 

 The sandy sediment carried into the lake by streams, or during rain, 

 gradually raises its bottom near the shore ; thus enabling the common 

 reed, already vegetating on its border, to push forward its creeping 

 stolones farther and farther into the shallow water, — ^it is the leader of 

 the van of progress. Tracing backward from this band of reeds 

 growing in the clear water, another band or border extends, consisting 

 of aquatic plants which vegetate nearer the surface, and rise less above 

 it ; on the outer part of this band. Confervas (the green thread-like 

 plants that grow in stagnant water) surround the plants in question, 

 like green clouds, almost concealing the fluid in which they grow. 

 These latter form a bed in which Sphagnum, Bog-Moss, vegetates and 

 renders the surface more compact. Beyond, stiU nearer to the firm 

 land, the Sphagnum becomes mingled with various marsh flowering 

 plants, and even with some of the meadow grasses that delight in 



