“Over in the meadow where the green grass grows”

I was thinking of this poem as I was walking along with Miss Dog.   And when you really look closely at the grasses growing in a meadow, they are not all the same boring uniformity as your basic suburban lawn.   The grasses can be individuals, growing in their own ways.

This tall one grows in a tussock.   It has wheat-like seeds, growing up from the stalks.  It’s no doubt a feather reed grass of some sort.

This one features little  sprigs of seeds.   Miss P enjoys eating grass (perhaps she is part Black Angus) and she especially likes this kind.  She swears it’s delicious, and can’t resist it.

This one is a fox tail grass, with lovely fuzzy seed heads.

This grass growing with an entwined dandelion has fine hair-like leaves.  This species is called hairgrass (oh who thinks up these names?)

But it’s not all just grasses in a meadow, this weed features tiny white flowers to add a bit of variety to the sea of green.

This thing reminded me of the alien man-eating plant from Little Shop of Horrors.   Pretty soon it will be large enough to start eating people (don’t say I didn’t warn you!).

This grass is possibly a patch of wild onion, judging by the stems (oh yeah, I guess I should have sampled it to be sure.)

Here’s a dried stalk of last year’s grass, looking vaguely wheat-like.   This is what the others will look like come fall.