172 
ENGLISH BOTANY. 
fruit- Lower pale, with a prominent obtuse angle on the margins half 
way between the middle and the apex at each side, deeply bidentate at 
the apex, quite glabrous or very minutely scabrous, -with broad white 
scarious margins. Awn from the bottom of the notch of the pale, 
straight, erect or slightly curving outwards, a little longer than the 
pale. Upper pale nearly as long as the lower. 
In fields of saintfoin and clover, and by waysides ; doubtless intro- 
duced with foreign seed, but plentiful in Kent and Cambridge, and 
more sparingly in Surrey and Essex and York; on waste ground in 
Middlesex and Hampshire ; also on ballast hills at Middlcsborough, 
Durham ; and Charleston, and Inverkeithing, Fife. 
[England]. Annual or biennial. Summer, Autumn. 
Stems fi to 80 inches high, wiry. Leaves similar to those of the 
preceding species, but narrower, som 'times not more than inch 
broad. Panicle 1 to 9 inches long. Spikelets i to 1 inch long. Florets 
i to } inch long. 
A well-marked species, distingui-lied in its fully developed form by 
its very lax open roundish-pyramidal panicle, "with long capillary 
branches, which are slightly arching from tiie weight of the spikelets 
in flower, but become tirmer, nearly straight, and ascending in fruit. 
The si)ikelets are narrower and more parallel -sided than ui any other 
of our species; the pales narrower, with 2 more acute and longer 
teeth at the apex, anci usually they are prettily variegated with oreen 
and purple, with white margins. 
Our plate represents the [)anicle much more secundly drooping 
than it ever is in a living plant, the branches having apjparently all 
been bent over in one direction to get the panicle within the compass 
of the copper-plate. 
Starved specimens sometimes have the panicle nearly or quite 
simple, but they still have the long slender capillary branches, 
although these are reduced to pedicels. 
B. arvensis is somtrimcs confounded ^vith B. patulus, ;\r. & K., a 
plant not sutticientlv naturalised to be de-ervimr of a place in the 
Briti>h Flora as yet, though it >ceni^ to he more conunou now than it 
wa- M>mc year- ago. P,. patulu> ha> the panicle smaller than that of 
B. arven>i-, :in<l -ecunillv druojung with shorter branches and larirer 
l;i!icenla;e ^pikri-r-, which iire drooping in flower and fruit, and whollv 
green: the ll ax-r- lnv- their lower pales more involute in fruit, so 
that the floret- an- separated (though less so than in B. secalinus), 
and the ufir*. - - . " ■ Ti'i'ly shorter than the lower one. The 
awn in B. ; - backwards in fruit. 
