GRAMINEAE (GRASS FAMILY) 61 
excellent hay when cut before seeding. Poultry also eat the 
seeds without any bad effects. (Fig. 30.) 
Culms two to four feet tall, simple, erect, smooth. Sheaths 
overlapping, smooth; blades six inches to a foot long, about a 
quarter-inch wide, smooth below but somewhat rough above, 
deep green. Spikes four to eight inches long, the rachis flexuous 
and grooved on its sides, the spikelets sessile and attached to the 
rachis with their edges resting in the alternate curves; spikelets 
five- to seven-flowered, the lemma sometimes awned, sometimes 
not; the glume at the base of each spikelet equaling or exceeding 
it in length, looking like a bract in the axil of which the spikelet 
sits. Seed slender, brown, boat-shaped, with a deep groove on the 
inner side, appearing somewhat like a slim, hard grain of wheat; 
the palea is closely adherent to it, making it about as heavy as a 
kernel of wheat and difficult to separate from that grain when 
threshed with it. 
Means of control 
Sow clean seed. Grain containing Darnel should not be milled 
but should be fed to cattle or poultry; or the crop should be cut 
green and used as hay. Darnel-infested land should not again be 
used for grain until the rotation has included some cultivated 
crops. 
= QUACK-GRASS 
Agropyron répens, Beauv. 
Other English names: Couch-grass, Wheat-grass, Scutch-grass, 
Twitch-grass, Quitch-grass, Dog-grass, Devil’s Grass, Whickens. 
Introduced. Perennial. Propagates by seeds and by creeping, 
jointed rootstocks. 
Time of bloom: June. 
Seed-time: July. 
Range: The whole of North America except the extreme north. 
Most injurious in the United States from New England westward 
to Minnesota. 
Habitat: Fields, roadsides, and waste places. 
If it were put to a vote, perhaps most farmers would name 
Quack-grass as the most obnoxious of its tribe; yet it makes good 
hay and two crops a year of it, is sweet pasture grazing which cattle 
