GOOD-FR1DAY GRASS— continued. 
coiled receptive surface. As is the rule in wind-pollinated flowers, the stigma usually 
reaches its maturity or receptive state before the stamens are ready to discharge their 
pollen, and it may remain viscid for a few minutes, for a few hours, or for several 
days. It has also been observed that in this Family there is a marked tendency for 
many flowers to open simultaneously, without any apparent change in the weather to 
account for it — an arrangement obviously advantageous to anemophilous species. 
The ancient name Juncus is connected with the Latin jungere , to join, the leaves 
of Rushes having from primitive times been used for tying ; and at one time the 
Wood-rushes were named Juncoides. They are distinguished by their flat grass-like 
leaves fringed with long, weak, white hairs, and by their one-chambered, three-seeded 
ovary. When the great Swiss botanist Auguste De Candolle founded the genus 
Luzula, the purist Sir James Edward Smith, the founder of our Linnean Society, 
essayed to make what he termed 
“an indispensable correction in the orthography of the name. The hairy heads of flowers, wet with dew, and sparkling by 
moonlight, gave the elegant Italians an idea of their lucciolr , or glow-worms ; sometimes written /uzzio/r, but this is a 
provincial corruption. Hence, however, John Bauhin got the name of Gramett /u-zulce f or Glow-worm Grass, for he never 
called it LuzuJa , which would have been the same as actually calling it a Glow-worm.” 
Smith accordingly calls Luzula “ neither Latin nor good Italian ” and spells the name 
Luciola ; but in this he has not been followed by other botanists. 
The name Wood-rush is not very apt, since many of the forty species inhabit 
open pastures, fens, or mountain summits. L. campestris, coming into flower early in 
the year, often in March, and growing in meadows and pastures, though generally 
then only four or five inches high, is rendered conspicuous by its tufts of dark brown 
or almost black, flowers, which are clustered three or four together in a three- or four- 
branched panicle. It has thus gained the names of Chimney-sweeps, Sweeps’ Brushes, 
Smuts or Blackcaps, while its early flowering gives it that of Cuckoo-grass ; but from 
a variety of names, mostly quite local, I have selected one, Good-Friday Grass, in use 
in my native village. 
This species is further distinguished by its creeping not tufted habit of growth, 
by a reddish-brown tinge at the base of its slightly lustrous leaves, by the filaments 
being less than a quarter the length of the anthers, and by the nearly globular brown 
seeds, one-twelfth of an inch in diameter, with a whitish basal appendage nearly half 
their length. 
“As soon as the bud begins to open,” writes Lord Avebury, “the three stigmas push out, and soon wither. Sever.il 
days (5-9) then elapse before the flower is completely open, and another, making 6-10, before the anthers are ripe. The flower 
remains fully open for about 36 hours. From the long interval between the withering of the stigmas and the ripening of the 
anthers, it is evident that the flower can never fertilise itself.” 
