The Book of Grasses 



thickness. Millets were among the most ancient of cultivated" 

 grains, being planted long ago in China each spring by princes of 

 the royal house. And in lake dwellings of the Stone Age the 

 grain has been found in such quantities that it must be assumed 

 to have yielded the chief bread supply of prehistoric men. 



Yellow Foxtail. Pigeon-grass. Setaria glauca (L) 

 Beauv. 



Annual. Naturalized from Europe. 



Stem 1-4 ft. tall, smooth, branched, erect. Lower sheaths loose and 

 flattened. Ligule a ring of short hairs. Leaves 2'-i2' long, 2"-<^" 

 wide, somewhat hairy at base. 



Spike (spike-like panicle) i'-4' long, cylindrical, densely flowered, clothed 

 in tawny yellow bristles. Spikelets i-flowered, about if" long, sur- 

 rounded by a cluster of 5-10 upwardly barbed bristles which rise from 

 below the base of each spikelet and exceed the spikelet in length. 

 Scales 4; outer scales unequal; 3d scale sometimes enclosing a palet 

 and staminate flower; flowering scale of perfect flower wrinkled, thick, 

 and very convex. Stamens 3, purple. Stigmas purple. 



Cultivated ground and waste places. July to September. 



Throughout North America, except in the extreme north. 



BUR-GRASS 



Nature has decreed that the gatherers of her harvests shall be 

 disseminators of the plants they use. But those weeds which 

 are tramps of the wayside, like Spanish needles, burdock, and Bur- 

 grass, having nothing of value to commend their transportation 

 to new fields, have developed an insistent scheme for pushing new 

 generations out into the world, and bind burdens upon all passers- 

 b>'. Most appropriately do botanists comment upon Bur-grass as 

 "a vile and annoying weed," since it is one that causes trouble 

 from the Atlantic to the Pacific. No one who has walked along 

 railways, to find them Elysian fields in their variety of flora, can 

 forget climbing sandy embankments through a hindering growth 

 of this plant. 



Bur-grass is more abundant in the Southern than in the North- 

 ern states. It is low and spreading, sometimes carpeting the 

 ground on waste land and near sandy shores, and the flowering 

 spikes, composed of numerous, spiny burs, present a peculiar ap- 

 pearance, leading one to doubt if this can be grass at all. A red- 

 dish tinge is often noticeable in the flat sheaths as well as in the 



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