CHAPTER X.
ON THE SPECIES OF MEADOW-GRASSES.
Although we possess more than a hundred species of native grasses, we shall rarely find a fourth of them even in a wide range of meadows; and if we do so, it is rather an argument against than in favour of the quality of their herbage, as, so few are the best grasses in number, that it is almost a law for the best meadows to contain the fewest species of true grasses.
If, then, the good grasses be so few, whatever is not of these must be inferior, and, indeed, so bad are some grasses that they can only be considered as weeds. These weed-like forms are known to the farmer from his observing that the cattle usually refuse to eat them, and hence he has got to call them “sour grasses,”—a term which, though perhaps meant to convey the idea that such are objectionable in flavour, yet it is oftener that they are refused from their want of flavour, or from some mechanical objection arising from their roughness of growth, some having sharp serrated cutting edges to their leaves, whilst the spicular awns, so conspicuous in the beard of barley, cause great irritation by sticking beneath the tongue and in the gums. Of these, the first are objectionable for pasture, the last for hay, and should, therefore, not be found in really good meadows.
The figures and descriptions which follow are given in illustration of some of the more usual meadow species, which, though not fully or botanically described, will yet aid the practical farmer in estimating the species, and their value and significance, which he will commonly find in his fields.
Fig. 13. The Meadow Foxtail.
The Meadow Foxtail (Alopecurus pratensis, [fig. 13]) is an early species of the spicate form—i.e., the flowers grow close together, into a more or less dense head. It yields a great quantity of herbage, especially in moist situations; and is particularly adapted for the irrigated meadow. It should be distinguished from the A. geniculatus (Kneeling Foxtail), whose spike is only about half the length and size, as this is particularly a water species, so that if found when a meadow is dry, it is yet an evidence that water must have lain where it occurs for a considerable period of the year. Also from the A. agrestis (Slender Foxtail), which has a longer and thinner spike, as this latter is a weed in poor hungry clays, which is useless except as serving to indicate that the land wants perhaps both drainage and manure. Here, then, our first genus presents us with species indicating the varied conditions of rich meadow, wet places, and poor arable; and it is this variableness in adaptability that makes the grasses such important indicators of the nature and condition of soils.