A VENA pratensis.
Narrow-leaved Oat-grass.
TRIANDRIA Digynia.
Gen. Char. Cal. o f 2 valves, containing several florets.
Outer valve o f the corolla bearing a twisted awn on
its back.
Spec. Char. Spike erect. Calyx containing about five
florets. Receptacles hairy. Leaves involute, finely
serrated, naked.
Syn. Avena pratensis. Linn. Sp. PI. 119. Sm. FI.
Brit. 141. Hurls. 52. With. 165. Hull. 26.
Relh. 42. Sibth. 49. Abbot. 24. Lightf. 105.
A . bromoides. Linn. Sp. P L 1666.
G ram en avenaceum montanum, spica simplici, aristis
recurvis. Ravi Syn. 405. t. 2 1 . ƒ . 1 .
A N A TIV E of dry chalky or limestone pastures and heaths,
where it flowers in July.
Root perennial, fibrous, downy, bearing many tufts of rigid,
smooth, linear leaves, whose edges are rolled in, and finely
serrated, and whose broad sheathing bases are of long continuance.
The stems are few, 12 or 18 inches high, erect, stiff,
with one joint only, which is near the bottom, and clothed in
their lower part with the long sheaths of 2 or 3 broad short
leaves. The flowers grow erect, in an upright, mostly unbranched,
spike, rather than a panicle ; but the stalks of the
lowermost are generally, one or more of them, lengthened out
in some degree; the rest are very short or none at all. Calyx-
valves narrow and sharp, nearly equal. Florets 4 or 5; their
stalks within the calyx hairy; their outer husks purplish, with
a membranous point, and bearing from their backs a purplish
twisted awn, nearly twice their own length : their inner husk
is finely fringed.
Linnaeus by the mistake of Gouan was led to describe
this grass a second time under the name of A . bromoides.