Bermuda grass is evil,bermuda grass is bug.

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Pland Description and Habitat:Agropyron Repens.

Couch Grass Extract INCI Name Agropyron Repens Extract CAS 84649-79-6 EINECS ELINCS No 283-459-1 Couch grass rhizome extract Triticum repens L Dog Grass root photo picture image Couch grass has fascinating root and rhizoma,origin from africa, and widely spread allover the world.Triticum is a pervasive perennial grass growing up to 1.5m in height and found in Europe, Northern Asia, Australia and America.

 Couch-grass is widely diffused, being not only abundant in fields and waste places in Britain and on the Continent of Europe, but also in Northern Asia, Australia and North and South America. It was formerly known as Triticum repens, though now assigned to the genus Agropyrum.

 Among these the Couch-grass (Agropyrum repens) is pre-eminent, though anything but a favourite with the farmer, for it has a slender, creeping rhizome, or underground stem, which extends for a considerable distance just beneath the surface of the ground, giving off lateral branches occasionally, and marked at intervals of about an inch by nodes, from which leaf-buds and slender branching roots are produced. These long, creeping, subterranean stems increase with great rapidity, and the smallest piece left in the ground will vegetate and quickly extend itself, so that it is almost impossible to extirpate it when once established in the soil, while its exhaustive powers render it very injurious to the crops. Its very name, Couch, is supposed to be derived from the Anglo-Saxon, civice (vivacious), on account of its tenacity of life. It is said that the only way to extirpate it, is to lay the ground down in pasture for some years, when the Couch will soon be destroyed by the close-growing Grasses, for it flourishes only in loose soil.

 Cynodon dactylon (Pers.), a grass very common in the south of Europe and the warmer parts of Western Europe, also indigenous to Northern Africa as far as Abyssinia, affords the Gros Chien-dent or Chiendent and Pied-de-poule of the French. It is a rhizome differing from that of Couch-grass, in being a little stouter and in containing much starch, of which there is no trace in Couch-grass. Under the microscope it displays an entirely different structure, inasmuch as it contains a large number of much stronger fibrovascular bundles and a cellular tissue loaded with starch, and is, therefore, in appearance much more woody. It thus approximates to the rhizome of Carex arenaria (Linn.) which is as much used in Germany as that of Cynodon in France and Southern Europe. The latter appears to contain Asparagin, or a substance similar in composition to it.

 The herb of Hygrophila spinosa (Linn.) has been used for the same purpose as Couchgrass rhizome, and was formerly included in the Indian and Colonial Addendum to the British Pharmacopoeia. It contains much mucilage.

 Part Used:The rhizome, or underground stem, collected in the spring and freed from leaves and roots.

 Couch-grass rhizome is long, stiff, pale yellow and smooth, about 1/10 inch in diameter, hollow except at the nodes and strongly furrowed longitudinally, with five or six longitudinal ridges. Where the nodes occur, traces of rootlets may be found on the under surfaces and the fibrous remains of sheathing leaf-bases on the upper surfaces, but all traces of rootlets and leaves must be removed before use.

 As found in commerce, the rhizome is always free from rootlets, cut into short lengths of 1/8 to 1/4 inch and dried, being thus in the form of little shining, straw-coloured, many-edged tubular pieces, which are without odour, but have a sweet taste.

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citations1.Bermuda grass is evil,bermuda grass is bug.

last edit date:6th,July.2009.