“Aftermath”: in a news bulletin, a word usually loaded with dread, a consequence of a catastrophe. It has a gentler connotation in the ancient cycle of haymaking. Derived from the Anglo-Saxon maeth, meaning mowing, it describes the summer regrowth of cut meadows, for grazing.
High on the fell side, meadows recently shorn bare were still recovering their lush green aftermath. Down beside the river, the footpath meandered through a tall stand of timothy grass (Phleum pratense), saved from the mower by the steep slope and uneven ground. On this windless, humid morning, the slightest touch on its cylindrical flowerheads, surrounded by haloes of white stamens, released clouds of pollen, notorious for triggering hay fever.
Timothy, one of our most beautiful grasses, has acquired multiple identities. It was still known as meadow cat’s-tail in the early 19th century, when George Sinclair, gardener to the Duke of Bedford, was commissioned to compare agricultural merits of native grasses. He formed a low opinion of it, in his Hortus Gramineus Woburnensis, published in 1816: “Very deficient in produce of after-math,” he reported, “slow in growth after being cropped” and “unfit for cultivation by itself”.
Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, American farmers saw it in a more favourable light. Scandinavian settlers introduced it into New England in the late 1600s and by 1711 it had become known as Herd’s grass, after John Herd, a Maine farmer who began to cultivate it. But it was Timothy Hanson, a farmer-entrepreneur, who developed it as a commercial fodder crop on his Maryland farm in the 1720s, selecting strains that produced high quality hay, suited to an economy still dependent on horse power. With endorsements for Timothy’s grass from customers like George Washington and Benjamin Franklin, its reputation as superior feed for thoroughbred horses, with a reliable aftermath for grazing, travelled back across the Atlantic. By the mid-18th century, so had his improved seed.
And so it was that, by the latter half of the 18th century, meadow cat’s-tail, alias Herd’s grass, became timothy. Scientifically, all are Phleum pratense, but botanical terminology hides a rich cultural history, embedded in colloquial names of this elegant grass that fringed our footpath today, whose pollen made us sneeze.
