Tuesday, November 08, 2011

art toneless glumes


Posted by Picasa Part art. Someone has left an adhesive graffito on a  rusting metal  casing. Erosion, if it has not improved it, has neatly modified.

There is an absence of tone in The Grove this afternoon. The ground strewn with leaves, the paths brown, the shrubs, black and ochre, the trees trunks slate-coloured, the branches  scratched against a grey sky. It is not raining but the still air is full of moisture and heavy drops  condense and fall from above with an occasional  plop. 

The Observers Book of Grasses, Sedges and Rushes sits on my desk. I enjoy reading about Glumacious  plants ( a lovely word  which  goes some way to explain my pleasure)  if only for the vocabulary which comes with them.  An example from the introduction: " The naturalist understands by "grass" such plants only as fall under the description given below of the Gramineae, a natural family of the larger order  Glumaceae which differ from most other flowering plants  in having their flowers enclosed in chaffy scales or  glumes known as spikelets."
It  is apparently common to confuse  the grass family with other members of the Glumaceous order belonging to the family of Cyperaceae or sedges. It is pleasing to be reminded that bamboos of which tall forests are found in Asia, are grasses. And sugar cane too.

3 comments:

Roderick Robinson said...

I once had to cover a talk by the head of the Sports Turf Research Institute based in Bingley. It was there that I came upon chewings fescue for the first time. I take this rare opportunity of wheeling it out for its decennial promenade.

Lucy said...

Glumes, what a wonderful word and one that brought me straight over, overcome with curiosity, when I saw it in my sidebar.

I like the idea of recondite anecdotes which we get out perhaps only once every ten years. It might be interesting to make an anthology of them, but the problem is they rather have a life and will of their own and only pop up when summoned by some unexpected prompt. That's what I find anyway.

CC said...

This post your other commentators are as entertaining as yourself! :~)