Grass is difficult

We, that is, I (Toad only does some mowing when I ask him to do some) let some areas of grasses at the Boggy Brae grow tall. It has proved, empirically, to be a good way to increase the number of wild flowers that grow amongst the grasses. Mowing can also depend on the weather and on the available energy of the mowers given the extreme tiltedness and unevenness of the, ahem, 'lawns'.

There are several species of grass and, along with trying to document all the other wild plant and fungus species, I'd like to know what their botanical names and idiosyncracies are. I recently bought an excellent book on the subject, Colour Identification Guide to the Grasses, Sedges, Rushes and Ferns of the British Isles and north-western Europe by Francis Rose. Quite an investment at fifty quid! I also have the Roger Phillips photographic guide to grasses, ferns, mosses and lichens, and an old Pelican book of my late aunt's, Grasses by C E Hubbard, first published in 1954. which is chock full of information in small print.

The Grass Studying Centre!

The front yogurt pot is where I keep my microscope camera attachment. The orange-lidded pot behind the microscope contains extra microscope lenses and other bits and bobs. a decade or so ago it contained Sainsbury's salted peanuts. Let no-one say I don't take recycling seriously!

So, to try and identify a Boggy Brae grass, I start with the Francis Rose with its well thought out elimination keys. The trouble is that I become unstuck fairly quickly, especially with terms like 'viviparous', which I sort of think I understand but then find I don't, or else, after several elimination routes through the keys to various illustrations and descriptions, my BB grass still doesn't quite fit any of the descriptions. So then I open Hubbard and find that he lists umpty-ump subspecies and hybrid crosses. Oh boy!

At that stage I give up and just peer through the microscope at various tiny things, like this grass aphid. It is about 2mm long.

Back end

Front end

And then yesterday there was this minute spider with what looked like a lump of lichen growth on its back. I suppose it was carrying spider eggs and the licheny stuff had got stuck on top somehow. I couldn't get a good picture because it was scampering about so fast but these two pics, one using the light above the subject under microscope scrutiny and the other using the light from below, will give you the idea.

The use of the two lights to pick out detail in different ways is useful in the grass ID attempts too. I was looking for identifying features of a grass spikelet, and not succeeding very well, when I switched the light source and revealed a detail I was in search of – that the spikelet in question had both glumes and lemmas (I think those are the terms!). Anyway, you can see in the bottom lit pics that there are two sheath-type wotsits – below the flowering bit of the spikelet in the first one, and to the right in the second.

Glume and lemma sheaths starting at top left of pic

Here two layers of grass flower 'sheath' show
at the back going up to top of pic

Those details are less easy to see in the top lit pics , at least until you really know what you're looking for! It's a steep learning curve. I like it, even though I still haven't identified this grass with anything like conviction!

And then I end up just playing with a photograph of a grass head and trying different 'effects' on the Aperture app. Grass is fun too.