c
FESTUCA VIVIPARA. { Festuca ovina, var. Hudson, &c.
Viviparous Fescue,
Spec. Char. Florets permanently viviparous.
From the peculiarities attending this plant, it certainly deserves a station separate from the preceding
species, but whether it will be universally considered as entitled to specific distinction we cannot say.
It inhabits alpine stations in the north of England, * and is found in perfection in Scotland, on dry
walls, as well as the moist crevices of. dripping rocks.-—------The seeds of many of our pasture grasses
will commonly germinate in their husks by the successive gleams arid glooms of autumn, and especially
those which spring up amidst the crags on the summits o f mountains, rarely and transiently visited by
a sunny beam to perfect their seeds, by an express ordination of Nature become locally viviparous,
when the seed, already vegetated to a plant, falls from the parent stem and takes root in the earth,
an immediate plant, not a tardy germinating seed; and thus anticipates the economy of Nature.
But the plant before us must not be considered as simply viviparous by local or casual circumstances,
but we find it yet retaining these habits in all altitudes and seasons, and still preserving its singularities
after the cultivation of twenty years f in southern Britain; and thus seems to manifest that its habits
arise from constitutional mechanism. In a very early age the terminating floret springs out and forms
a leader, and in that state has three or four valves wrapping it up at the base, but in succession each
valve becomes elongated (an inch or more), and forms leaves to the leader, till all have shot out,
excepting the calyx, which remains unaltered; roots then occasionally spring out, the sprout afterwards
drops from the calyx, becomes rooted in the earth, constituting a separate and independent
plant.------Nature appears to have designed what we call the corolla, in grasses, to, act as a cradle to
sheath and guard the immatured germiri, giving it two leaves, that each offspring of the family might
be preserved distinct; but in the Festuca vivipara, where there are no stamens or pistils, it would not
be required, and consequently we find here the corolla to consist only o f an outer, and no inner valve,
and it is this inner valve that germinates and forms the radical leaves of the infant plant.--------- The
leaves of the Viviparous Fescue are fine and setaceous, but we have never perceived them manifesting
any roughness, as is observable in F. ovina.
A, the Calyx.
B, the Spicula in an early state.
C, the Spicula advanced in age.
* About the falls of Lowdore, and Ambleside, and all the little mountain rills in Cumberland and Westmoreland, it
is produced in perfection.
+ Observing a plant of F. vivipara in the garden of the late Mr. Sole, of Bath, he told us that he brought it from
Snowdon thirty years before, and that it had been in every season invariably viviparous. This circumstance is not peculiar
to F. vivipara, for we. have noted it as attendant upon Poa alpina, Aira caespitosa, and almost all our grasses, which having
once become viviparous, by transplantation do not lose that faculty, and produce seed; for as the construction of the
corolla would be required to be different for a seminiferous plant, removal alone will not probably effect the necessary
alteration.