14G 
EXGLISH BOTAXr. 
In meadows and pastures, &c. Extremely common and uni- 
versally distributed. 
England, Scotland, Ireland. Perennial. Summer. 
Stems 9 inches to 3 feet high. Eadical leaves 2 inches to 1 foot 
long. Panicle 2 to 7 inches long. Spikelets i to ^ inch long, usually 
with 5 or 6 florets, green or glaucous, often more or less tinged with 
purple. Florets ^ to i inch long. Lower pale smooth or more or 
less pubescent, sometimes terminated by an awn half its own length. 
A very variable plant, but usually larger and stouter than any of 
the states of F. ovina, with the stem-leaves more numerous, and 
always either flat or widely channelled, so as to show the upper sur- 
face, which bears a few broad greatly-raised finely-pubescent ribs, but 
the chief point of difference is in the mode of growth. 
In F. ovina the rootstock divides into numerous erect straight 
branches, and each of these branches is often again branched at 
intervals, but the branches all remain as nearly parallel as may be, 
the outside ones in large tufts however being pushed out of the 
erect into an ascending position by the pressure exerted on them by 
the central ones. Each ultimate branch bears numerous closely- 
placed leaves, of which the outermost are withered by the time 
of flowering. The flowering stem forms a continuation of the line 
of the rootstock without any curve at the base, though often with a 
bend at its first node above the base, and is not separated from the 
tufts of radical leaves by any portion clothed with leafless sheaths, or 
sheaths of which the laminjB have decayed. ' 
In Festuca duriuscula the rootstock divides into short horizontal 
branches, produced from stolons emitted in the summer or autumn of 
the preceding year. These branches diverge horizontally and are 
clothed with sheaths which are either leafless or have the lamiiiie 
quite withered at the time of flowering, some of them terminating in 
barren tufts of leaves, others in flowering stems, the base in both being 
sharply bent round from the horizontal direction of the rootstock- 
branches into the vertical one of the barren tufts and flowering stems. 
Fnder the name of Festuca duriuscula, from Continental botanists, I 
find about an equal number of specimens of the plant described above 
under that name, and of the large variety of F. ovina, previously 
noticed as var. major. Unfortunately F. duriuscula " is wanting 
in my set of Billot's collection- Under the name "duriuscula," KoclT, 
Grenier and Godron, and Pteichenbach doubtless mean a form of F.' 
ovina; but I am inclined to tliink that F. duriuscula of Fries does 
really represent the shortly stoloniferous plant I suppose to be F. 
duriuscula of LimiEeus: while Fries, Koch, and Babington place the 
states of this F. duriuscula with longer stolons, under F. rubra. 
It is of very little importance what the \dews of Linnaeus wereas 
to the limits of his species of Festuca, as he had evidently not be- 
stowed much attention to" the genus ; for he confounded different 
