The grasses, Gramineae, make up a remarkable category of plants. They can grow almost anywhere; many can survive regular mowing in gardens and on sports pitches. There are reported to be some 160 species of grasses in Britain. Some are found only on sand dunes or mountain tops. World-wide, the group includes all bamboos, giant grasses. It would take a specialist expert many weeks to find out exactly how many grass species are to be found within the Mill Green Nature Reserve. The rest of this page can include only a few of the more obvious ones. 

A particular difficulty lies in the fact that only rarely can a grass be photographed effectively in its natural context: an individual shape can't be made out against its background. Specimens are therefore shown here on an A4 sheet of file paper.

When it comes to looking at grass flowers in practice, there are a number of things not to worry about, like size and colour: some species may be a few inches high if in the open, recovering from a recent mowing perhaps, while its mates have shot up to six feet or more on the edge of the lake or woodland. And many types of grass change colour to reddish or brown as they mature. No, the important thing is shape. But there are complications there too. All grass flower heads emerge from their tubular sheaths so they all appear first in a quite compact, correspondingly tubular form. Many species retain that shape: the form of their flower-head, of their inflorescence, is of a spike.


1   •   This not-very-impressive inflorescence is of perennial ryegrass, Lolium perenne. There is no significant difference between the big one and the modest shoot that is smaller than part of that flower. Varieties of this ryegrass are the basis of most of the productive pastures in Britain, as well as virtually all football, rugger and hockey (non-plastic) pitches, and coarse hardwearing lawns.
2   •   At the other extreme, couch or twitch, Elymus repens is known to all too many gardeners as the pernicious grass weed that multiplies the more you chop it up: it can regrow from any part of its rhizomes (underground stems). In our Reserve it is just another contributor to the green summer plenty. (Alternative, Agropyron repens.)
3   •   If you need to tell them apart, 3a couch grass has its florets, the individual flower units, stuck flat-on to the stalk, whereas 3b perennial ryegrass has its florets edge-on to the stalk.
4   •   You can forgive sweet vernal, Anthoxanthum odoratum, for being slightly untidy as it is pretty much the first of the grasses to confirm when springtime is upon us. It is very common in permanent pastures but is rarely included in seeds mixtures.
5   •   Slightly tidier, soon keeping sweet vernal company, meadow foxtail, close-up, is a miniature fox's tail: Alopecurus pratensis. The flower on the left shows the fatter appearance while all the stamens are shedding their pollen into the early summer airs.
6   •   Later, towards midsummer, timothy, Phleum pratense, makes its contribution. The shape may be similar to that of the foxtail, but the texture is much harsher, almost that of a stiff bottle brush.
7   •   With a somewhat less obvious derivation, crested dogstail is a modest contributor in cut or grazed grassland: Cynosurus cristatus, shown as a small specimen newly emerged, and as a larger one with its individual florets opened up. Beware: its flower stalks are very fine and almost tough enough to cut your finger!

But the majority of grass flowers have side branches which are deployed shortly after emergence, forming a pattern more reminiscent of a that of a Christmas tree. There's a huge range of them. Two of the most common and widespread around the Reserve are 'cocksfoot' and 'Yorkshire fog'.

1   •   A clump of cocksfoot near the footpath on the end of the dam. Cocksfoot is a tough and drought-resistant grass: it can form the kind of clumps that trip you up.
2   •   On the woodland edge cocksfoot can be vigorous and grow tall. The shape is quite characteristic, with blobs - groups of florets - on the ends of side branches which get shorter nearer the top. Those branches are more or less on one plane, east-west so to say, not all round the stalk.
3   •   (a) Branches begin to move out at right angles as soon as the flowerhead emerges. (b) The typical cocksfoot shape. (c) Once fully emerged the pollen sacks come into operation.
4   •   Yorkshire fog has more of a symmetrical 'Christmas tree' form (distorted a bit when laid flat to have its photo taken). It is very soft, almost woolly in texture, and unpopular with grazers.
5   •   Clearly showing against a suitable background, Yorkshire fog quite often has tinges of mauve colouration on its flowerheads.
6   •   Yorkshire fog can grow mixed in with other grasses, or it can form clumps as here.

As mentioned earlier, to identify all our Reserve grasses would be a massive task, and it is certainly impossible to identify grasses from photographs alone. We end with a tiny selection -

1   •   There is a group of moderately tall grasses which have flowers like these, including hairy awns (on a par with the whiskers on ears of barley): they are known as oat grasses. This one is probably Arrhenatherum elatius, 'tall oat grass'.
2   •   Another group of grasses is the 'fescues': some are very common and widespread on other ecosystems such as saltmarshes and moorlands. Our specimen is almost certainly 'meadow fescue', Festuca pratensis.
3   •   Agrostis species have the curious traditional name of 'bent' grasses. They all have almost fairy-like inflorescences with extremely thin branches bearing single-flowered florets. It is reasonable to guess that our specimen is 'common bent', Agrostis tenuis.
4   •   A definitely recognizable grass is the small 'annual meadow grass', Poa annua: it is a very widely distributed annual which can be found in flower at any time of year. It rarely exceeds six inches in height. As with other Poa species, each leaf-tip is shaped like the prow of a boat! (It was reported in 2017 to have been found growing, perhaps thanks to global warming, on the Antarctic continent. A real toughie!)
5   •   Very characteristic is the 'barren brome', Bromus sterilis, which starts off green but commonly changes to this dark colour. It is sterile in name only. There are other 'bromes', but this is the most dramatic of the genus.