The Book of Grasses 



spongy floats, drift downstream until the little rafts are washed 

 ashore and the seeds find soil on which they may take root far, 

 often, from the parent plant. 



Tcrrell-grass. Virginia Wild Rye. £lymus virginicus L. 



Perennial. 



Stent 2-4 ft. tall, erect, rather stout. Ligule very short. Leaves 4'-i4' 

 long, 3"-8" wide, flat, rough, deep green, sometimes downy on upper 

 surface. 



Spike 2'-y' long, base usually included in loose upper sheath. Spike- 

 lets 2-3-flowered, in pairs on alternate notches of the rachis. Outer 

 scales narrow, thick, and rigid, terminating in rough awns, outer 

 scales 8"-i3" long including awns; flowering scales about 4" long, 

 usually smooth, terminating in a rough awn 3"-io" long; palets nearly 

 as long as flowering scales. Stamens 3, anthers pale yellow. 



Moist soil, by streams and borders of thickets. June to September. 



New Brunswick to Ontario and Minnesota, south to Florida and Arkansas. 



BOTTLE-BRUSH GRASS 



While the Red-top is pressing the warmth of its colouring into 

 every conspicuous place, the cool woodlands hold a few strikingly 

 individual grasses that are not found mingling with the bourgeoisie 

 of the fields. Shade-loving grasses of the woods are rarely crowded, 

 and appear to be careless of that striving for position which keeps 

 the grasses of the open pressed so closely leaf against leaf. 



With the name of Bottle-brush Grass in mind this plant is 

 instantly recognized when seen, since the loose, spreading spike is 

 so unlike the flowering-heads of other grasses, even those of other 

 long-awned species. About this grass there is ever a suggestion of 

 the aristocrat, none of the beggars for a roothold is this, but a 

 plant that condescends in using the earth, and confers a royal 

 favour by appearing in the shadows where the sunlight falls in 

 broken gleams. 



The tall stems of Bottle-brush Grass rise from among the rocks 

 where there seems no earth in the crevices to support life, and as the 

 pale spikelets open and spread their silvery awns the plant is one 

 of rare beauty, worth many a long tramp in the search for it. The 

 nodes of the leafy stems are very dark, and the lower sheaths are 

 frequently tinged with purple. The thickened bases of the spike- 

 lets are banded with narrow lines of brown, marking the place 

 of abortive scales which in the lower spikelets appear as thread- 



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