Grasses

 Even without colourful flowers, a walk through a meadow can reveal a great variety of grasses.  There are hundreds of grasses, sedges and rushes in Britain with more than 100 common ones and it's worth just noticing the different flowering heads at this time of year, even if you don't know their names.

  

Here are a few I picked today.  It's Barren Brome on the left and Cocksfoot on the right and I think the longest cylindrical one is Timothy. The others I shall just call meadow grasses - there is a lot to learn. 

Here's another one I found - Yorkshire Fog.  It's more furry than most and so a bit easier to recognise.

Here's a patch of it.

It stands out from the rest with its foggy, whitish colour

Each grass species sheds its pollen for only a couple of hours at the same time each day.  The pollen grains from each species are so similar that they contain a number of antigens to help the plant collect the right ones.  This is why grass pollen is such a problem for human hay fever sufferers.