Fern Glen Essays
A Glume-y Forecast
by Judy Sullivan

How quickly the spring season wanes. That first exhilarating pulse of spring-fevered blood that coursed through our veins in late March has tempered. Last April, we embraced rare clement days with the passion of lovers long parted. In May, we demand warmth as our due. Weeks earlier, we heralded opening blooms with exclamations of delight; in throes of rapture did we cast ourselves before every blushing violet, each pendulous bellwort. By June, flowers are bedraggled and the excitement of pollination has settled into the slow swelling of fruit. Nature, we surmise, has finished flaunting finery and donned dull duds.

Boy, are we wrong.

We expect all flowers to inspire costumes for prom night. Frothy confections, elegant drapes, capes, panniers and frilly bodices — all in show stopping colors and proportions. While ember-orange honeysuckles and magenta gaywings are quite beautiful, we forget that they are simply strumpets for the tawdry pleasures of bees and flies, which transfer pollen from one to another.

We're not only jaded; we're nearsighted. Right under our noses are exquisite flowers of charming subtlety and self-effacing grace. I speak of the grasses, whose simple floral elegance goes oft unnoticed.

Pragmatically speaking, the flowers of grasses don't need duplicitous tactics to ensure their reproduction. Pollen dangling from lissome florets is caught up by passing breezes and sails over rill and ridge. It may land in a waiting grassy ovary, a rocky crevice or, quite likely, waft into my nasal passages to be set upon by overzealous mast cells.

I invite you to examine an inflorescence. (You would, undoubtedly, see more clearly if you peered through your own dissecting scope. Nevertheless, for the purposes of this piece, I ask you to bear with my dim photographs taken through the eyepiece of mine, without benefit of the proper attachment.)

Here, the circled area is 1 floret of 2 on a spikelet. Two more little coverings, the outer called the "lemma" and the inner the "palea" are teased apart. We can just see the anthers with the pollen peeking out. The ovary is modestly hidden inside the lemma, somewhere below the anthers.

Although their arrangement on the stem may range from simple spikes to many-branched panicles, the flowers of grasses bear the same parts. In some cultures, there is a stigma attached to being female. In the case of the grass, it's literal. The stigmata are two feathery appendages (singular - stigma) that top the ovary like stylish feathers in a socialite's hat. These help to catch pollen. Each ovary is covered by a set of coverings (the outer lemma and the inner palea) that resemble tiny narrow leaves. Two scale-like glumes are positioned at the base of each spikelet of flowers.

Festuca rubra (red fescue) in dappled shade.
Native to parts of the US, but not necessarily New York.

While hypnotized by a motion not unlike tens of thousands of green windshield wipers - the incessant rising and falling of a meadow on a windy day — we realize that a lack of petals doesn't hinder the reproductive capability of grasses one whit. Many of those that adorn our landscape arrived with the colonists as food and forage, with a small number appearing as horticultural novelties. Some are branded as invasive; nevertheless, all have made themselves quite thoroughly at home. Escapees from hayfield or lawn, they take advantage of roadsides, parking lots, and construction sites.

(Click here for a low-resolution movie file, just for effect...) [mpg format - 1 mb]

The species pictured below hail from other climes. Most of our native grasses won't flower until later in summer. Mind you, I'm not advocating invasive grasses, merely offering a foretaste of what's to come. We've much to anticipate. However, it appears that it's a glume-y forecast, in more ways than one.

Questions, comments, or other feedback to Judy Sullivan.