GRASSES 205 



but it seems to withstand rather large quantities of alkali. 

 Growth was unhindered in a soil containing 5000 parts per 

 million of white alkali and a good growth was found where 

 7000 parts per million were present according to Kearney 

 (17). He regards it as about equal to brome grass in 

 alkali resistance, or slightly below western wheat grass. 



A number of new or minor grasses have been tried on 

 alkali lands in California, but none of them have proved 

 close competitors of the higher-producing standard grasses 

 of the United States, such as timothy and alfalfa. 



Wild or native grasses are frequently found growing on 

 soil which is very high in alkali. These grasses seldom do 

 well in pastures or meadows and generally do not produce 

 very large quantities of feed. Many of them are hard to 

 get started on new land; their value is likely to be mainly 

 as range grasses of poor pastures on highly alkaline soil. 



Salt grass (Distichlis spicata) is probably the most im- 

 portant of the native grasses. It occurs throughout the 

 world under a great variety of conditions. It was observed 

 in the Bear River Valley, Utah (16), growing on soil con- 

 taining from 30,000 to 50,000 parts per million of salts, 

 a large part of which was sodium chloride, and yet it does 

 well in soils containing practically no salt. It shows 

 hardly any preference for the type of alkali nor the con- 

 centration. It has been found growing apparently unaf- 

 fected on land charged with 8516 parts per million of sodium 

 carbonate (13), a quantity so great that hardly any other 

 kind of vegetation could survive. Of course where the 

 nature of the soil is unfavorable, these large quantities of 

 salts would be too great for the plants to do well, but most 

 alkali land does not contain excessive quantities of salts 

 for this plant. It produces little seed so that it is very 

 difficult to propagate artificially and it is seldom planted. 



