Shropshire Botanical Society Newsletter - Botanical Society of the ...

auricles (pointed outgrowths) which are particularly fine and bristle-like. The leavesare usually fairly sparsely hairy.Related species include several coastal plants, plus the woodland and woodlandmargingrass Elymus caninus Bearded Couch, which is tufted, without rhizomes andwith conspicuous (up to 22 mm) awns on the lemmas.The spike of Perennial Rye-grass is differently oriented to that of the couches or thewheats, having its two rows of spikelets in the same plane (Fig. 3).The spikelets typically have 4-11flowers, borne in two rows, either side ofa branch-like spikelet axis. There is onlyone glume; the one which would havebeen pressed against the rhachis has beenlost. It is a medium-sized (typically 40cm in fruit) shiny-leaved glabrous grass,with (rather ill-defined) auricles andtypically red-tinged sheaths. Theyoungest leaf emerges from the shootfolded double rather than rolled. Agrassland native, it is beloved of farmersbecause of its enthusiastic response tofertilisers and it is the main species in thesown leys.Fig. 3 Part of a Rye-grass spikeLolium multiflorum Italian Rye-grass is a similar, frequently-cultivated annual orbiennial grass with very well-marked awns on the lemmas, with more florets (10-18)per spikelet and with the youngest leaf emerging rolled rather than folded from theshoot. Its common hybrid with perennial Rye-grass also has rolled young leaves andan intermediate number of florets and development of awns and rather reducedfertility. Lolium temulentum Darnel, is a probably extinct annual weed with theglume longer than the spikelet.Sometimes you may find a Rye-grass-like inflorescence which DOES actually havean inner glume against the rhachis. If growing in damp pasture with Rye-grass and/orSchedonorus pratensis Meadow Fescue, it could be the intergeneric hybrid betweenthe two which Stace (2010) now says we must call X Schedolium loliaceum TheHybrid Fescue.19