6 IXTRODUCTIOX 



different localities. Not infrequently the same common name 

 has been used for two entirely different grasses at different 

 places. The name grama grass, the grama probably of 

 Spanish origin, is much misused. Every one has heard it 

 and has heard of white grama and black grama and possibly 

 blue grama, and the average individual, assuming grama to 

 be everywhere over the region, picks out a grass which is 

 "white" or "black" or "l)lue" as he sees it and calls it the 

 corresponding grama. The process (and others equally 

 logical) results in a very mixed nomenclature which only 

 confuses. 



A botanist at once would suggest that the Latin names 

 of the plants be used for the sake of accuracy, but the average 

 man is unable to think of a grass by a Latin name because his 

 attention is drawn away from the grass by the linguistic 

 difficulty of the name. Herein lies the dift'iculty and a 

 problem which is not solved in the following bulletin because 

 the authors can neither make common names for all the 

 plants nor so present the Latin ones to their readers that they 

 will not he more or less confusing at least to some who really 

 do want to know about the grasses. 



The authors, attempting to "straddle" the difficulty, 

 have presented in untechnical language some notes on the 

 more important species under the common names whenever 

 there are any, and have tried to straighten out any confus- 

 ion in the use of these common names. Whenever an 

 important grass has no common name we have used the 

 Latin one, referring also to its relationship. In order to 

 have something definite to correlate the names with, a set 

 of figures that are typical of the different genera and rep- 

 resent some of the more important species is included. For 

 the sake of those who are interested enough to investigate the 

 technical side of the subject all the species are listed with 

 ordinary "keys" for the determination of tribes, genera and 

 species. In these "keys" it is of course necessary to use 

 technical descriptive terms. Definitions of these terms can 



