THE FLORAL WORLD AND GARDEN GUIDE. 
199 
and other like damp spots, and very plentiful near London. The 
flower-spikes may be likened to wire-work dotted with beads to 
form a loose pyramidal pattern. The purple Molinia, Molinia 
cosrula, merits notice as the darkest-coloured of all our grasses, the 
colour of the glumes being dark-green with reddened tinge of 
blue, and the large anthers are of a purple colour. In form it is 
poor, the spikelets being on a long, straight, wire-like stem, few and 
distant. The Soft Meadow grass, Holcus lanatus, may be found 
wherever a grass of any kind can live ; and you may know it 
by its large and beautiful soft panicle of numerous small spikelets 
of a pinkish-purple colour, and its downy leaves. The flowering ot 
this grass is in many districts the signal to begin bay-making. 
The Reed Meadow grass, Poa aquatica, grows on the margin ot 
almost every river in the land, and you must make acquaintance 
with it, or, as a botanist, be accounted “ nowhere ” in the grasses. 
It bears a noble plume above its broad bright-green leaves, and 
makes a bonnie show in the shallows, when in flower. As for the 
other poas, fifteen in number, we had best slide past all save one, 
and that one, the Rough Meadow grass, Poa triviolis, is one of 
the very best for garden lawns in the vicinity of towns, and there- 
J aly. 
