FLOWERS OF THE GRASS FIELDS
Just before hay-time, the crowning glory of the Thames-side flats is given
by the flowers growing in the grass. Their setting, among the uncounted
millions of green grass stems, appeals not only by the contrast of colour,
but by the sense of coolness and content which these sheltered and softly
bedded blossoms suggest. The meadows which they adorn are best-loved of
all the fields of England; but they would never be as dear to Englishmen
as they are were it not for the flowers which deck them. The blossoms and
plants found in the tall grasses differ from those on lawns and grazing
pastures. They are taller, more delicate, and of a more graceful growth.
The daisy, so dear to pastoral poets, is not a flower of the hayfield. The
myriads of springing stems choke the daisy flowers, which love to lie low,
on their flat and shallow-rooted stars of leaves. The daisy is a lawn
plant that loves low turf, and only in early spring on the pasture-fields
does it whiten the unmown grasses. The turf glades of the New Forest,
grazed short by cattle for eight hundred years, are very properly called
"lawns"; and on these the daisies grow in thousands, showing that they are
true lawns, and not grassfields mown yearly by the scythe.
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