STUDIES OF PLANT LIFE 
and clothing. Were it not going beyond the bounds of my 
subject, I might plead earnestly in behalf of my destitute 
and too much neglected Indian sisters and dwell upon 
their wants and trials; but this theme would lead me too 
far away from my subject. The Indian Grass, so called, 
Hierochloa borealis (Roem. & Sch.), is little known in its 
native state, as it is only the Indians themselves who know 
where to seek for it. This is among lonely lakes and forest 
haunts. The soil where it grows is in low sandy flats, especi- 
ally on shores where the soil is composed of disintegrated, 
friable rocks, reduced to gritty, coarse sand, where it can 
push out its slender white running roots most freely; and 
there it sends up, early in May, its culms and light panicles 
of shining flowers. The glossy straw-colored plumes and 
purple anthers make this grass a very lovely object. The 
leaves, too, are of a shining bright full green. It is the 
earliest of any of the grasses to push up its pointed blades 
above the ground; and, so far as my knowledge of the plant 
goes, for I have had it in my garden for many, many years, 
it is the earliest to blossom. Only when dried, or rather 
withered, does it give out its sweet scent, which it retains 
for years. 
I have braided the long ribbon-like leaves and made 
dinner-mats of them, and also chains tied with colored 
ribbon, after the Indian fashion, and sent them to friends 
in the Old Country to lay like lavender in their drawers. 
One thing I must observe of the Indian Sweet Grass, 
although it grows readily, and flourishes in any odd corner 
of the garden in which you plant it, it rarely puts forth a 
flowering stem; nor can I account for this, unless it may be 
the absence of some specialty in the native soil that is lack- 
ing, and for the need of which it may grow luxuriantly as 
to leaf but bring no fruit to perfection. 
Among the common wild grasses, we have many kinds, 
214 
