P L A T E CXI .
TRI T ICUM.
Gene. Char. Calyx with two valves} spikets sitting, solitary, and few flowered.
TRITICUM REPENS.{%c.H«i.
Beardless Quitch-grass.
Sp e c . Ch a r . Florets without aristae, or with an arista not longer than the floret valvej
leaves broad and flat.
T r it ic um repens is a well known plant under various names, and against which a general anathema
seems to have been pronounced: but however injurious it may be when plentiful, it is bad management
alone that encourages its growth, or permits its existence when sprung up. In exhausted or neglected
fields, and in places where the injudicious habit o f liming the land, till it is little less than mortar, is the
practice, this Triticum is sure to abound, and immediately pronounced to be tl;e offspring o f the soil,
and nothing placed to the account o f bad management: where the fields have been sufficiently manured,
and attentive husbandry shewn, this Quitch is banished to the surrounding hedges, nor intrudes
but little upon the crop.------ But the eye of the farmer does not alone select this grass as Quitch, but
includes under that name whatever grassy root he finds creeping in his fields, and several species of
the genus Agrostis, &c. are condemned under that name.---------Triticum repens produces several
varieties, deviating in the length o f the aristae, and we find it either awnless, or with the arista the
length of the floret valve, and from four to eight florets in the spiket: the formation o f the roots of
this grass is very remarkable, and we frequently find the leading joint so strong and sharp as to pierce
potatoes, decayed wood, or any other moderately hard impedinient it encounters in its progress.____
Triticum repens, from this formation of the root, is much more easily eradicated than many other
plants, as the harrow, rake, and even the hand, can collect its runners, as it propagates not at all
by seed, but every joint of the root is the founder o f a baneful progeny.^--— Through the darkness
that rests upon the writings of the elder herbalists, we guess with little evidence the medical
remedies o f the ancient world} yet it is probable that this Triticum constituted the ‘ graminis radix
dulcis’ of the simple disciples o f the school o f Galen} its virtues resided more perhaps in the fancy
o f the leech, than in the actual energies of the plant} yet its merits seem generally acknowledged as
a gentle diuretic and aperitive: but modem constitutions require more potent drugs, and the temper
o f an European patient would be exhausted, and the skill o f a physician suspected, by the lenient
and tardy siege of vegetable potions} and the ailments o f these days, alone retire before the speedy
searchings and rapid assaults of mineral activity.
A, B, Spikets with and without aristae.
C, the Calyx.
D, the valves o f the Corolla.