1 62 Muhlenbergia, Volume 5 



FEATHER GRASS 

 By A. A. Heller 



Stipa Thurberiana Piper, U. S. Dept. Agric. Uiv. Agrost. 

 Circ. 21 : 10. 1900. 



Stipa occidentalis Thurber, U. S. Expl. Exped. 11: 483. 

 1874. Not Stipa occidentalis Thurber, Bot. King Rep. 

 380. 1871. 



This is the species to which the manuscript name of occi- 

 dentalis was originally applied, the specimen upon which it was 

 based having been collected by the botanists of the Exploring 

 Expedition under Captain Wilkes on the "North Branch of the 

 Columbia and Okanogan, 1 ' but its publication was delayed for a 

 number of years. In the meantime the botanical report of the 

 King Expedition was published, and going on the supposition 

 that the same species was at hand, Watson printed the name 

 occidentalis, crediting it to Thurber, but citing first a plant col- 

 lected by Bolander in the Yosemite Valley, California, this 

 thereby becoming the type. Unfortunately, though, it proved 

 to be different, as pointed out by Piper in the place cited above. 

 The two species may be readily separated by the. difference in 

 the awn, that of occidentalis being pilose below and scabrous 

 above, while that of Thurberiana is strongly plumose both be- 

 low and above. 



As shown in the cover illustration, taken by Dr. P. B. Ken- 

 nedy in December, 1904, in the Rock Springs Range several 

 miles north of Reno, it forms extensive clumps, and this in con- 

 nection with the fact that it persists through the greater part of 

 the winter, makes it a valuable winter forage plant, particularly 

 for sheep. 



In Bulletin :>:>: 9, of the Nevada Agricultural Experiment 

 Station, F. H. Hillman, speaking of its occurrence in the vicin- 

 ity of Reno, says it "is the commonest of our species of this 

 genus in this region. Nowhere docs it grow thickly, but its 

 very general distribution over the ranges on a variety of soils 

 makes it a grass of considerable importance. Its small bunches 

 of leaves, six inches or more high, surround several stems, rising 



