42 



tanee. The long, feathery awns oi ? Stipa pennata are beautiful and orna- 

 mental. (Plate 37, Stipa viridula.) 



Stipa spartea. 



Stipa spartea is called porcupine grass, arrow grass, and devil's 

 knitting-needles, from the long, stiff, twisted awns inclosing the seed. 

 The seeds ripen early and drop to the ground, and later in the season 

 the grass may be easily recognized by the persistent, bleached culms 

 and empty glumes of the spreading panicle. The long root-leaves con- 

 tinue green and vigorous throughout the summer,' frequently being 2 

 feet long. Although somewhat coarse the grass makes a very good hay, 

 and forms a considerable part of the wild prairie hay in Iowa, Nebraska, 

 Minnesota, and southern Dakota. It is called buffalo grass in the Sas- 

 katchewan region. It should receive attention in Western experiments 

 for a pasture grass. (Plate 38.) 



ORYZOPSIS. 



This genus differs from Stipa chiefly in having a shorter ovate or oblong flower, 

 with the callus at the base shorter and broader, and in having usually a very short 

 and deciduous awn to the flowering glume. 



Oryzopsis cuspidata (Bunch Grass). 



This grass has a wide distribution, not only in the Sierras of Califor- 

 nia, but northward to British America, and eastward through all the 

 interior region of Utah, Nevada, New Mexico, Texas, Colorado, and 

 Nebraska, to the Missouri River. It is a perennial, growing in dense 

 tufts, whence its common name. 



Tho culms are 1 to 2 feet high, with about three narrow, convolute leaves, the up- 

 per one having a long, inflated sheath which incloses the base of the paui cle. The 

 radical leaves are narrow, rigid, and as long aa or longer than the culm. The panicle 

 is about 6 inches long, very loose, spreading and flexuous. The branches are in pairs, 

 slender, rather distant, and are subdivided mostly in pairs. The spikelets are at 

 the ends of the capillary branches, each one-flowered. The outer glumes are 3 to 

 4 lines long, inflated and widened below, gradually drawn to a sharp-pointed 

 apex, thin and colorless except the three or five green nerves, and, slightly hairy. 

 The glumes inclose an ovate flower, which is covered externally with a profusion of 

 white, silky hairs, and tipped with a short awn, which falls off at maturity. This 

 apparent flower is the flowering glume, of a hard, coriaceous texture, and incloses a 

 similar hard, but not hairy, and smaller palet. 



In Montana it is one of the most esteemed bunch grasses, and thrives 

 on soil too sandy for other valuable species. Professor Brewer states 

 that in southern California it is called saccatoo or saccatoa. (Plate 39.) 



MILIUM. 



Spikelets panicled ; outer glumes membranaceous, equal and convex, the flowering 

 glume and its palet coriaceous, much as in Panic-urn, but the articulation with the 

 rhachis is above the outer glumes. All the glumes are unawned, and there is no ster- 

 ilr prdicel. 



