COCKSFOOT
Cocksfoot, Dactylis glomerata, is a common grass of pastures and meadows throughout the UK, as well as many other parts of the temperate world where it is either native or has been introduced. In the USA it is known as orchard grass. In British farming it was widely valued for both grazing and hay, provided it wasn’t allowed to get too mature, and it had a useful resistance to drought. The author knew it from his early days as a sprog at the old Grassland Research Institute, then located in an idyllic site at Hurley in the mid-Thames Valley. New strains were being compared for their palatability and feeding value against the old Aberystwyth variety S37. Ryegrass and its hybrids rather took over its role in the decades of intensive husbandry which followed, but cocksfoot is now enjoying a resurgence as interest is renewed in more diverse seeds mixtures again, as so-called herbal leys.
The grass is readily recognisable in the vegetative stage from its flattened shoots which open out to long, elegantly tapered leaves, typically of a greyish green colour. The flowering shoots are also distinct, displaying a somewhat clumped arrangement of the spikelets (hence the specific name glomerata), and with the lowest branch usually with a longer stalk and well isolated from the more crowded upper ones. Ecologically, cocksfoot favours neutral to calcareous soils and when occurring in unimproved or semi-improved swards serves an important role as a larval foodplant for some of our most characteristic grassland butterflies. In his Pocket Guide to the Butterflies of Great Britain and Ireland (British Wildlife Publishing, 2003), Richard Lewington specifically mentions Speckled Wood, Gatekeeper, Ringlet, Wall and Large and Essex Skippers as laying their eggs on cocksfoot – and surely our faithful Meadow Brown must do so too!
In rough grassland, road verges etc., where the flowering stems are allowed to persist and set seed as the season advances, they are favourite anchoring points for the webs and interconnecting strands constructed by orb web spiders.