8 BULLETIN 692, U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 
The name redtop in New England commonly applies to Agrostis 
vulgaris and not to Agrostis alba, which formerly at least was known 
generally as white bent or whitetop. 
Among the common names that have been applied in New England 
to Rhode Island bent are the following: Rhode Island grass, fine 
agrostis, fine bent, furzetop, Burden (or Burden’s) grass, and small 
redtop. 
Occasional plants of Rhode Island bent possess an awn to the 
floret. This form has been named Agrostis alba aristata Gray. It 
is much less common than the unawned Rhode Island bent, and 
Hitchcock (6) speaks of it as ‘‘scarcely more than a form of Agrostis 
alba vulgaris.’ ‘This variety has never been cultivated except as its 
seed was indirectly mixed with true Rhode Island bent. 
Agrostis alba aristata Gray breeds true or nearly so. Jenkins (8) 
reports an experiment in which nine plants were grown from awned 
seeds. In all cases the resultant plants had at least some of their 
florets awned, but in about one-third of the panicles there were but - 
few awned florets, and in six panicles no awns could be detected. 
The problem as to whether Rhode Island bent and its awned 
variety are native in America or were introduced from Kurope is 
difficult. Their widespread abundance in New England argues in 
favor of their nativity, but other undoubtedly introduced perennial 
grasses are quite as widespread and abundant, such as Bermuda 
erass and Johnson grass in the South, bluegrass over much of the 
northeastern quarter of the United States, and velvet grass in the 
Pacific Northwest. To a less degree timothy, orchard grass, redtop, 
and other grasses show the same phenomenon. 
If Rhode Island bent were native, it should show geographical con- 
tinuity either northeastward through Labrador and Greenland or 
northwestward through Alaska. In the case of Old World plants 
undoubtedly native in New England, one or the other of these lines 
of natural distribution is evident. The distribution of Rhode Island 
bent does not accord with either of the two possible routes of natural 
spread, which argues in favor of the grass being mtroduced by man. 
Prof. M. L. Fernald, of Harvard University, whose long and inti- 
mate knowledge of the northeastern American flora makes his testi- 
mony of special value, writes— 
I am now ready to state that Agrostis vulgaris is in all probability an introduced, 
though very extensively naturalized, grass. I can find no evidence of it in the more 
remote and essentially untrodden areas in the interior of Newfoundland or Gaspe, 
although in the neighborhood of settlements the plant has taken freely to primitive 
habitat. Variety aristata I should call unquestionably indigenous, though I have 
occasionally found it growing by roadsides or in the turf of lawns. Its chief habitats, 
however, are the absolutely untouched woodlands and thickets. 
