26 | THE SEEDS OF THE BLUEGRASSES. 
Poa nemoralis L. 
WOOD MEADOW GRASS. 
Spikelets 2 or 3 flowered; florets 23-3 mm. long, lanceolate or ovate-lanceolate, 
mostly acute at the apex, light brown, sometimes yellowish tinged -near the apex; 
glume rather broadly keeled and somewhat arched at the back; margins of the 
glume narrowly infolded quite to the apex or hyaline-edged and often flaring above 
the middle; intermediate veins very indistinct; keel and marginal veins silky 
pubescent below the middle; basal web slight; surface between the veins glabrous; 
palea nearly equal to the glume, evidently shorter in florets having a flaring apex, 
its keels hispid-ciliate and usually covered by the margins of the glume; rachilla 
segment varying from one-fourth to three-fourths of the length of the glume, the 
sterile rachilla segment very uniformly much longer than the others, more or less 
appressed pubescent, the pubescence somewhat variable and sometimes nearly want- 
ing; aborted floret of the sterile rachilla segment often one-half as long as the seg- 
ment; grain 13 mm. long, rather slender, semitranslucent. (Fig. 7.) 
Fic. 7.—Seeds of wood meadow grass (Poa nemoralis): a-c, back views; d and e, side 
views; j-j, front views; j, a terminal floret. 
Commercial wood meadow grass seed is not rubbed in preparation 
for market, and therefore possesses much of its rather persistent and 
prominent silky pubescence, and the thin tips of the florets are mostly 
uninjured. The pubescence of the rachilla segment is persistent and 
present in most of the seeds of all pure samples of this species. It 
affords the most marked characteristic by which the seeds of P. nemo- 
ralis may be distinguished from those of other commercial species of 
Poa. The conspicuously longer rachilla segments of the terminal 
florets are noticeably abundant in samples of this species, since these 
florets constitute from one-third to one-half of all the seed. The 
abundance of the long rachilla segments is helpful in distinguishing 
these seeds from those of other Poas. 
Commercial seed of P. nemoralis is apt to be very much adulterated 
with other species of Poa. Of a number of samples examined less 
than half were true to name. One was nearly pure Canada bluegrass 
seed, and the rest consisted in part of one or all of the following 
species: P. pratensis, P. compressa, and P. trivialis. 
The following comparison of characters should render it compara- 
tively easy to distinguish the seeds of ?. nemoralis from those of the 
other species. 
