Sweet Vernal Grass - Anthoxanthum odoratum

Grass of the Month for April

   In this, the International Year of Biodiversity, CEL website features a different British Grass each month - Follow these pages and you will be come an expert in grasses too... well, a little more knowledgeable maybe!!

1: January - Reed Canary Grass - Phalaris arundinacea
2: February - The Common Reed - Phragmites australis
3: March - Blue Moor-grass Sesleria caerulea
4: April - Sweet Vernal Grass - Anthoxanthum odoratum
5: May - Meadow Foxtail - Alopecurus pratensis
6: June - Quaking Grass - Briza media
7: July- Timothy Grass - Phleum pratense
8: August - Common Bent - Agrostis capillaris

I'm going to tell you a poem .. one that not only has secret hidden tips on how to identify this grass of flower rich hay meadows .. but also revels in the joy of finding it.

(The picture on the right has two Sweet Vernal-grass heads in the foreground and a barn with a traditional haymeadow beyond. (It was actually taken in early June)

Sweet Vernal-grass, which starts to flower at the end of April or beginning of May, is one of the first grasses to flower - apart from Blue Moor-grass in northern limestone areas and Annual Meadow-grass which flowers all year.

It has small flat leaves and the emerging leaf rolled - like Common Bent-grass, and several other common pasture grasses - but it is distinctive in having hairs at the edge of the base of the leaf blade.

Sweet vernal-grass is the only common grass to have a smell, and it gives the scent to hay.

It grows in traditional flower rich hay meadows - but will grow in other places too such as woods, road verges and your garden

Your upright head it greets me
With dandruff-like white flecks
I see your flag leaf waving
What will you think of next?

I pounce, lens at the ready,
to see if I am right
I look at blade base edges
Yes - whiskers there alright.

What it says.

With shoot held close to eye
Your roots are close to nose
That coconuty coumarin
Smell slowly on me grows

The smell of coumarin can be described as like coconut but also like creosote. The smell gets stronger as the plant dries.

Sweet woodruff, a white flower found in ancient woodlands has shoots with this small too and it is/was sometimes picked and dried and stored with linen to keep it smelling nice