(Bot.) A name given to many tall and coarse grasses or grasslike plants, and their slender, often jointed, stems, such as the various kinds of bamboo, and especially the common reed of Europe and North America (Phragmites communis).
2.
A musical instrument made of the hollow joint of some plant; a rustic or pastoral pipe. "Arcadian pipe, the pastoral reed Of Hermes."
3.
An arrow, as made of a reed.
4.
Straw prepared for thatching a roof. (Prov. Eng.)
5.
(Mus.)
(a)
A small piece of cane or wood attached to the mouthpiece of certain instruments, and set in vibration by the breath. In the clarinet it is a single fiat reed; in the oboe and bassoon it is double, forming a compressed tube.
(b)
One of the thin pieces of metal, the vibration of which produce the tones of a melodeon, accordeon, harmonium, or seraphine; also attached to certain sets or registers of pipes in an organ.
6.
(Weaving) A frame having parallel flat stripe of metal or reed, between which the warp threads pass, set in the swinging lathe or batten of a loom for beating up the weft; a sley. See Batten.
7.
(Mining) A tube containing the train of powder for igniting the charge in blasting.
Free reed (Mus.), a reed whose edges do not overlap the wind passage, used in the harmonium, concertina, etc. It is distinguished from the beating or striking reed of the organ and clarinet.
Meadow reed grass (Bot.), the Glyceria aquatica, a tall grass found in wet places.
... over the surface of the yellow buttercups, and away above the hedge. Hart's-tongue fern, thick with green, so green as to be thick with its colour, deep in the ditch under the shady hazel boughs. White meadow-sweet lifting its tiny florets, and black-flowered sedges. You must push through the reed grass to find the sword-flags; the stout willow-herbs will not be trampled down, but resist the foot like underwood. Pink lychnis flowers behind the withy stoles, and little black moorhens swim away, as you gather it, after their mother, who has dived under the water-grass, and broken ... — The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies Read full book for free!
... not so good as that at Najack. There is towards the sea a large piece of low flat land which is overflowed at every tide, like the schorr with us, miry and muddy at the bottom, and which produces a species of hard salt grass or reed grass. Such a place they call valey and mow it for hay, which cattle would rather eat than fresh hay or grass. It is so hard that they cannot mow it with a common scythe, like ours, but must have the English scythe for the purpose. Their adjoining corn lands are dry and barren for the most part. Some ... — Journal of Jasper Danckaerts, 1679-1680 • Jasper Danckaerts Read full book for free!
... the open woodlands where the fine white flowers of the Canada anemone blow, and slough grass in the marshy meadows where the white-crossed flowers of the sharp spring are fading, and the woolly stem of the bitter boneset is lengthening; reed grass and floating manna grass in the swamps where the broad arrow leaves of the sagittaria fringe the shore and the floating leaves and fragrant blossoms of the water lilies adorn the pond. The three days' rain beginning ... — Some Spring Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell Read full book for free!
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