Meadow Grasses

Pond poppies	Black bindweed

The vegetation in the meadow has grown dramatically during the last few weeks as the grasses have come into full flower, dwarfing many of the smaller plants in their race to set their seed and outdo each other for next year. In the dry pond the vegetation is so thick that many of the smaller flowers can no longer be seen, but the Field Poppies have come out in all their glory, with an impressive display of red. Before the pond vegetation grew so high we found one more new species for our list. This is Black Bindweed, a little climbing plant with spear-shaped leaves and tiny pink flowers, which often grows on disturbed ground.

This month we are taking a closer look at the different grasses found in our meadow. You may think that grass is…....well, just grass and rather boring, but we hope to change your mind!

Funny Flowers 2 - Grasses

Think of a meadow, a field, a hillside, a roadside, underfoot in a wood, a garden or a park in summer, and you think of grass. But the green carpet on your lawn is only part of the story of grass: the bottom bit, without the business end, just a few leaves cut off low before the grass can do what it needs to do to reproduce. That means flowering and setting seed, for grasses are true flowering plants. Like the trees we looked at a couple of months ago, grasses have flowers that don’t look like our idea of a flower at all. So what does a grass flower look like?

Cocksfoot3	False Oat-grass
Quaking Grass	Crested Dogstail

Barren Brome

Grass Seed Sizes

The first thing to say is that the flower heads of grasses look just as variable as any other group of flowering plants. If you doubt it, just look at the huge variety shown in these photographs of some of the grasses in Reg’s Meadow. The lower picture on the right shows the comparative sizes of some of the different flower heads, to give you an idea of how much variation there is in size alone. But there are some common features, and unfortunately we need to get into some fairly heavy jargon straight away.

Timothy Grass and Soldier Beetle	Rye Grass
Cocksfoot	Quaking Grass

Wild Oat

There they may be in big clumps, like Cocks-foot grass, or dangling daintily, each on their own stalk, like the pretty Quaking grass. Sometimes the flowers have bristles called awns sticking out of the end of them, which can make the spikelets look like a paintbrush that has been dipped in water – Wild Oat and the Bromes have especially long awns.

Ligules	Wood False-brome

These vary a lot in shape and can help to distinguish between species that may have similar flowers. The ligules shown here are those of Timothy Grass (left), Cocksfoot (centre) and Yorkshire Fog (right). Some grasses have rough or hairy stems and leaves, while others are smooth and shiny. Wood False-brome, which grows in the corner of the hedgerow just where you turn left for the meadow seating area, has very hairy nodes on the stem, which is otherwise quite smooth – a grass with hairy knees!

Yorkshire Fog	Quaking Grass	Meadow Grass

Identifying grasses is really difficult, and on this page we’ve only illustrated some of the more distinctive-looking grasses in the meadow. To be sure about many grasses you need a microscope and a lot more expertise than we can muster!

Wheat