NATIVE FORAGE GRASSES 145 



In the Pacific Northwest the forest originally occupied 

 most of the region from the Cascade Mountains to the 

 coast. The dense humid forest furnishes no grazing 

 grasses of importance but the more open forest of the 

 upper mountains may be carpeted with grass. An im- 

 portant grazing grass of the mountains of eastern Wash- 

 ington and eastern Oregon is pine grass ( Calamagrostis 

 rubescens Buckl.). This is a fine-leaved bunch grass with 

 a contracted, oblong, or cylindric flower head. An- 

 other important grazing grass of the northwest is 

 "bunch grass" or mountain fescue (Festuca idahoensis 

 Elmer), a grass with slender rough stiff leaves in a 

 large basal cluster and a small somewhat open few- 

 flowered panicle. There are also many species of Poa 

 or native bluegrass. 



The plateau of northern Arizona and adjacent regions 

 is covered with open forest and is here classified as forest, 

 though it is a semiarid region. Another species of 

 Festuca (F. arizonica Vasey), a bunch grass resembling 

 F. idahoensis, but often conspicuously bluish, is common 

 and is an important part of the forage. 



MOUNTAIN MEADOWS 



Where the mountains are high enough to extend above 

 tree line, there are areas of grass land that furnish grazing 

 during the summer as the snow retreats. These moun- 

 tain meadows contain many species of grasses, few of 

 which have distinctive common names. One species, on 

 account of its resemblance to the cultivated timothy, is 

 called mountain timothy (Phleum alpinum L.). Moun- 

 tain bunch grass (Festuca viridula Vasey), common in 



