XI 



BROME-GRASS (Bromus inermis) 



T> ROME-GRASS (Fig. 34) is one of the few recently 

 ■*-* introduced grasses that have won a perma- 

 bmHI nent place in American agriculture. Its in- 

 trodudlion is to be credited to the work of the 

 State experiment stations and the National Depart- 

 ment of Agriculture. It has been grown by them ex- 

 perimentally for a good many years, but began to 

 attradl general attention in the early nineties. It was 

 at first heralded by enthusiastic seedsmen as a panacea 

 for all the ills of the farmer. Without question it is 

 the best pasture-grass yet found for the Prairie States 

 of the Northwest and Pacific Northwest. On the great 

 wheat-producing soils of the sedtions mentioned it is 

 a pasture-g^ass unequaled in produdtiveness by any 

 other pasture-grass in the country (unless we except 

 the Bermuda grass of the South), and surpassed only 

 by blue-grass in the quality of its herbage. It is now 

 firmly intrenched in the favor of farmers from Kansas 

 to the Canadian line and west to the Cascade Moun- 

 tains of Oregon and Washington. It is also a valuable 

 grass for moderately dry uplands in parts of California. 

 It is distindlly a Northern grass, having never suc- 

 ceeded south of the latitude of St. Louis, except at 

 high elevations in the Mountain States. It is perfedlly 

 hardy, even in Manitoba. In the dry summers of the 

 Northern Pacific Coast region (east of the Cascade 

 164 



