ALOPECURUS GENICULATUS. {
Geniculated Fox-tail.
Spec. Chah. Straw with many joints towards the base, and knee-jointed.
Alopecurus geniculatus is a puny plant, of no agricultural value, and only eaten by cattle promiscuously.
It is readily distinguished from the other species by the glaucous, or blue-green hue o f
the straw and foliage; its numerous antherae almost cover the spike; the straw is thick, and the
joints coloured, and the spike after flowering becomes of a sable green.------This Fox-tail runs into
several varieties, chiefly to be distinguished by the length o f the arista, but that simple distinction is
found to be more changeable than any other part o f which our grasses consist, and consequently
can be but little depended upon as a specific criterion: in sea-marshes it is sometimes only an inch
or two high, and in shady ditches is again found to acquire the altitude of three or four feet.—-——
Several 6f our plants denominated grasses, by growing in dry situations, become geniculated, when the
general habit of the plant is to have: long and unbent joints, as they seem in those situations to acquire
their nourishment by uncertain and precarious means: in dry weather they vegetate slowly, and frequent
joints are thrown out, containing saccharine matter, to supply a nutriment where there is a
defect in that required from the soil; but by vegetating in due moisture, they grow freely, and require
not the saccharine food furnished by the joints: but in all respects this Fox-tail is an aquatic plant
which we find in splashy places, where water has been lodged in the spring and dried up, and in,wet
ditches; in all of which stations it is constantly bent and kneed, evidently making it as an invariable
habitual character, and not an occasional and accidental occurrence.----------The expression of Linnaeus
in the Syst. Nature, of ‘ corollis muticis,’ both for the Alop. pratensis and Alop. geniculatus, is singular,
as no doubts of the existence of aristae could arise, and can perhaps only be attributed to
inadvertence in his laborious works of the first edition, and continued unobserved through the following
impressions.
A, the Calyx.
B, a Floret Valve.