BRISTLES. Stiff hairs.
BRISTLY. Covered with stiff hairs.
BRISTLY-TOOTHED. Furnished with teeth like bristles, or with the teeth ending each in a bristle.
BRIZA (from briza, to nod). Quaking Grass. ORD. Gramineæ. A genus of ornamental hardy grasses. Panicle loose; calyx two-valved; corolla two-valved, awnless; exterior one ventricose, interior small and flat. Fruit adnate with the corolla. These extremely graceful plants delight in a soil composed of loam, leaf soil, and peat. Seeds may be sown in spring or autumn. For decorative purposes, the branches should be gathered as soon as full grown, and loosely placed in flower-stands, to dry. Tufts of these plants look extremely pretty on the rockery, or amongst hardy ferns.
B. gracilis (graceful). Synonymous with B. minor.
B. maxima (greatest).* fl., spikelets oblong-cordate, thirteen to seventeen-flowered; panicle nodding at the end. June and July. l. long, linear-acuminate. h. 1½ft. South Europe, 1633. See Fig. 278.
FIG. 278. BRIZA MAXIMA, showing Habit and single Flower.
B. media (middle).* Common Quaking Grass. fl., spikelets broadly ovate, of about seven florets (calyx shorter than the florets), tremulous with the slightest breeze, very smooth, shining purple. Branches of the panicle thread-shaped, divaricating, purple. June. l. short, linear acuminate. h. 1ft. Britain. (S. E. B. 1774.)
B. minima (least). Synonymous with B. minor.
