[See quots. 1765, 1894.] A name (originally American) for Meadow Cat’s-tail Grass, Phleum pratense, a native British grass, introduced into cultivation under this name in the North American colonies in the eighteenth century.
a. 1736. J. Eliot, Ess. Field Husb. (1760), 57. Herd-Grass (known in Pennsylvania by the name of Timothy-Grass)…. It is said that Herd-Grass was fust found in a swamp in Piscataqua by one Herd, who propagated the same.
1747. Franklin, Lett., Wks. 1887, II. 83. A bushel of clean chaff of timothy or Salem grass will yield five quarts of seed.
1750. W. Ellis, Mod. Husbandm., St. Timothy Grass.
1763. Museum Rust. (ed. 2), I. 233. Timothy grass … delights in a … moist soil, and has a running root like couch grass.
1765. Nat. Hist., in Ann. Reg., 143/2. Another artificial grass called Timothy-grass … because it was brought from New York to Carolina by one Timothy Hanson (according to the Century Dict., about 1720).
1809. Kendall, Trav., I. xxiii. 228. Timothy, here called English grass, is the grass cultivated.
1894. Times, 23 April, 12/3. Although Phleum pratense, long known as meadow catstail, is a native British grass, its cultivation as an agricultural plant was originated last century by Timothy Hanson, an American, after whom the grass got called timothy grass.
