136 WILD FLOWERS OF CALIFORNIA 



1850. Cotton sedge Eriophorium gracile Swamps, Sonoma County, 



Sierra County 



1851. Hemicarpha subsquarrosa Sacramento Valley 



1852. Hemicarpha occidentalis Yosemite Valley and else- 



where in the Sierras 



1853. Fimbristylis thermalis San Bernardino, Owen's 



Valley 



1854. Fimbristylis miliacea Reported as from San 



Francisco. 



1855. Fimbristylis apus Clear Lake. 



1856. Saw-grass Cladium Marciscus Swamp — San Gabriel, Los 



(var. Calif ornicum) Angeles. 



GRASS FAMILY GRAMINEAE 



Prepared by class in Agrostology, College o£ Agriculture, University of Cali- 

 fornia. 



The Gramineae are a very large family, consisting of about 500 genera and 4,000 

 species distributed throughout the world. Of these, about 85 genera and 325 

 species are found in California. There is probably no other family of plants 

 which has such a great number of individual plants, or which occupies so much 

 land as the grasses. In California they are found growing under a wide range 

 of conditions, from the low, moist places along the bays and rivers, to the desert 

 regions in the central valleys, or the high tops of the Sierras. 



The grasses are more widely used by mankind to supply his needs and com- 

 forts than any other family of plants. All the cultivated cereals and most of our 

 cultivated forage plants are from this family. There are also immense areas of 

 range lands in California and other western states covered with wild grasses which 

 are valuable for pasture. In many places in the state these pastures are becoming 

 depleted through too close grazing, the valuable native grasses being killed off 

 and their place taken by weeds or less valuable grasses. The problem of increasing 

 the number of these wild native grasses has become one of pressing importance. 



Grasses are often of indirect value in agriculture as soil and sand binders. 

 Certain species are especially well adapted to growing in the sand dunes of the 

 California coast, and thus covering them with a vegetation which prevents their 

 shifting. The sand dunes just outside the city of San Francisco were planted with 

 one of these beach grasses, Ammophila arenaria, and in this way converted into 

 the Golden Gate Park. Some grasses are also especially adapted to holding the soil 

 Dii steep hillsides and banks, due to their habit of spreading by means of root- 

 stocks, thus forming a thick mat. 



There are very few troublesome weedy grasses in California. Even the so- 

 called weedy grasses usually have some value for forage. Their chief injury to 

 agriculture is in occupying land which should be occupied by more valuable grasses. 

 A few are troublesome in irrigation ditches. 



The members of the grass family are comparatively easy to identify. The 

 California species are all herbaceous plants, usually with hollow stems (culms), 

 closed at the nodes, and two-ranked leaves. Leaves consist of two parts, the 

 sheath and the blade, the sheath enveloping the culm with the margins usually overlap- 

 ping, the blade with parallel veins, usually narrowly linear ; the inflorescence or flower 

 stalk, a panicle, or contracted into racemes or spikes ; the flowers usually are per- 

 fect, small without a distinct perianth, but subtended by small green bracts called 

 glumes; glumes usually three, with delicate filaments, pistil one, usually with two 

 styles and plumose stigmas. 



I. ANDROPOGONEAE 



1857. Western Blady-grass Imperata Hookeri 



A short-lived perennial with dense, spike-like panicles covered with silky 

 hairs. Desert regions of southern California. 



