CHAPTER XI.

ON MEADOW PLANTS OTHER THAN GRASSES.

With the grass of the field will usually be found a large proportion of plants of a very varied, variable, and different kind. Of these, many are useful as augmenting the mass, and even improving the quality of a pasture; whilst, as others are altogether objectionable, we shall presently notice them under the head of “Meadow Weeds.”

Of the more useful adjuncts of the meadow we may tabulate the following:—

+----+------------------------+--------------------------+ |No. | Trivial Names. | Botanical Names. | +----+------------------------+--------------------------+ | 1 | Red clover | Trifolium pratense. | | 2 | Zigzag clover | „ medium. | | 3 | White or Dutch clover | „ repens. | | 4 | Birdsfoot | Lotus corniculatus. | | 5 | Yellow vetchling | Lathyrus pratensis. | | 6 | Purple vetchling | „ palustris. | | 7 | Saintfoin | Onobrychis sativa. | | 8 | Burnet | Sanguisorba officinalis. | | 9 | False burnet | Poterium Sanguisorba. | |10 | Tormentil | Tormentilla officinalis. | |11 | Yarrow | Achillæa millefolia. | |12 | Agrimony | Agrimonia Eupatoria. | |13 | Plantain | Plantago lanceolata. | | | Some of the smaller Compositæ. | | | Ditto Umbelliferæ. | +----+---------------------------------------------------+

Of these, which are arranged pretty nearly in their order of merit, the clovers are by far the most important. These, as meadow plants, will usually be found under the following circumstances:—

No. 1. Plentiful in good, rich, sound meadows.

„ 2. Frequent in meadows on light sandy soils.

„ 3. On thin but good soil, upland meadows.

The clovers, and indeed the clover allies, _Papilionaceæ_, as a whole, are partial to lime,—so much so, that a dressing of this mineral to some fields in which clovers are scarcely represented will very quickly cause an accelerated growth of them; hence road dirt, when made from calcareous stones, as are the _oolitic_ and mountain limestones, affords a good vehicle for the admixture of manures or ameliorators, such as guano, burnt ashes, soot, nitrate of soda, &c.

The following remarks upon these three clovers are from a paper by the author in the _Bath and West of England Agricultural Journal_, vol. x.,