SALTBUSHES AND THEIR AILIES IN THE UNITED STATES 81 
Where it is best adapted to the conditions, this species puts a 
tolerably heavy crop of forage on the ground. Cattle eat it freely, 
especially after the seeds are mature. 
ERIOGONUM EFFUSUM Nutt. 
ELriogonum effusum is a low, diffusely spreading, herbaceous per- 
ennial, that sends up a number of branching green stems, 6 to 12 
inches high, the lower parts being woody. The leaves are small and 
are attached to the lower parts of the stems, which are dark 
brownish-red where the white woolly coating is rubbed off. The 
whole rounded top of the plant is covered with small whitish flowers, 
each of which is not more than one-sixteenth of an inch long, but they 
are so numerous that the whole plant looks white. Like the flowers 
of most of the species in the genus, they persist and turn rusty after 
the seeds mature. This species and several other similar species grow 
freely on the plains east of the Rockies in Colorado, Wyoming, and 
Nebraska, and in the northern part of the Great Basin region. 
Department sample 7216 (W), consisting of mature plants, with 
some of the basal leaves dry and the fruit young, collected at Wheat- 
land, Wyo., August 24, 1914, contained, on an air-dry basis, 6.2 per 
cent of moisture, and, on a water-free basis, 3.9 per cent of ash, 2.4 
per cent of ether extract, 23.4 per cent of crude fiber, 61.4 per cent 
of nitrogen-free extract, 8.9 per cent of protein, and 11.7 per cent of 
pentosans. j 
FE. effusum is grazed freely by livestock wherever it grows and 
adds to the feed produced each year on the ranges of its area of dis- 
tribution. 
ERIOGONUM FASCICULATUM Benth. 
Eriogonum fasciculatum is a low, branching shrub, 2 feet high or 
less, and about as broad. The older stems are bright reddish-brown, 
with stringy grayish old bark; the younger stems are almost white. 
The leaves are one-fourth to half an inch long, and thickish, with the 
margins rolled under; they are borne in crowded clusters at short 
distances along the younger stems. The small, bright pink flowers 
are borne in headlike clusters at the ends of peduncles, 3 to 5 inches 
long. 
E. fasciculatum grows on the drier, hotter mountains of south- 
western Arizona and southeastern California, extending into north- 
ern Sonora and Lower California. 
Department sample 7016 (W), consisting of young leafy stems 
with flowers, collected on rocky hills near Congress Junction, Ariz., 
February 18, 1912, contained, on an air-dry basis, 9 per cent of 
moisture, and, on a water-free basis, 5.8 per cent of ash, 1.6 per cent 
of ether extract, 21.6 per cent of crude fiber, 64.2 per cent of nitro- 
gen-free extract, 6.8 per cent of protein, and 10.5 per cent of 
pentosans. 
E.. fasciculatum is an important early spring feed for sheep, par- 
ticularly when the growth of herbaceous annuals is scanty. These 
plants make some growth whether there is rain enough for the an- 
nuals or not. Conditions unfavorable to the growth of the weedy 
annuals are very hard on range sheep, and any edible species that 
can produce feed for them at such a time is of particular value. 
