Identifier: britishgrassesse00prat (find matches)
Title: The British grasses and sedges
Year: 1858 (1850s)
Authors: Pratt, Anne, 1806-1893
Subjects: Botany Grasses
Publisher: London, Society for promoting Christian knowledge
Contributing Library: University of British Columbia Library
Digitizing Sponsor: University of British Columbia Library

View Book Page: Book Viewer
About This Book: Catalog Entry
View All Images: All Images From Book
Click here to view book online to see this illustration in context in a browseable online version of this book.

Text Appearing Before Image:
ing affectedby the smallest change in the atmosphere. This grassis so hke the cultivated oat, A. sativa, that some thinkit is but a variety of that plant, from which it is distin-guished by its longer awns, and by the stiff hairs at thebase of the glumella. Professor Buckman, however,remarks that it is approached in the latter respect byoccasional starved or seeded specimens of the field oat,in which the hairs occur. This circumstance, he ob-serves, gives some countenance to the belief so generalamong the farmers of the heavy lias clays, in the Valeof Gloucester, namely, that it is unsafe for them tocultivate oats because they leave behind a degeneratedrace of wild oats. At any rate it is a troublesomeweed, especially in stiff sterile lands. It is common infields of this kind, either of wheat, barley, or oats, as wellas amoBg beans ; and its blades being in its early growthso like those of corn, it cannot in the corn-field be dis-tinguished, and is therefore left behind, after hoeing.
Text Appearing After Image:
Wl I.I) (lAT <;liASS , Avcott. iBliia. ,V\l;IIOW I.KAVHI 3 . mtjsii.i. IoiNiiai u.c. A.sll-l^n ■:iti:NNiAi. o.n .A. pi-alcnisis BRITISH GRASSES AND SEDGES. 113 Farmers have long knoAvii that the seeds of the wild oatlie a long time uninjured in the soil; and so large is theplant, that it occupies a considerable space on valuablelands, and helps to keep off sun and air from the corn,ripening too before the wheat, and shedding its grainbefore that is removed from the land. It is a handsomegrass with its large cluster of pale green spikelets, theirchaffy glumes striped with green Hnes, and nodding ontheir slender branches, though the main stem of thegrass and of its cluster are erect. The oat was very early cultivated in this country; itsname is a Saxon one, and evidently connected with theverb to eat, the grain having been used as a bread cornas well as for horses. In very old books it is called Haveror Hafer corn; our old herbalists called it ote, ete, orhaver: and several Europea

Note About Images