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tance. The long, feathery awns of Stipa pennata z are beautiful Sail orna- 
mental. (Plate 37, Stipa viridula.) 
Stipa spartea. é 
Stipa spartea is called porcupine grass, arrow grass, and devil’s 
knitting-needies, from the long, stiff, twisted awns inclosing the seed. 
The seeds ripen early and drop to the ground, and later in the season 
f the grass may be easily recognized by the persistent, bleached culms 
and empty glumes of the spreading panicle. The long root-leaves con- 
tinue green and vigorous throughout the summer, frequently being 2 
; feet long. Although somewhat coarse the grass makes a very good hay, 
and forms a considerable part of the wild prairie hay in lowa, Nebraska, 
| Minnesota, and southern Dakota. It is called buffalo grass in the Sas- 
katchewan region. It should receive attention in Western experiments : 
for a pasture grass. (Plate 38.) } 
sabe NMR Weel head ve MAMRI Gin Wk) eis ae a sma 
ORYZOPSIS. 
This genus differs from Stipa chiefly in having a shorter ovate or oblong flower, 
with the callus at the base shorter and broader, and in having usually a very short 
and deciduous awn to the flowering glume. 
one a eS a 
Oryzopsis cuspidata (Bunch Grass). . 
This grass has a wide distribution, not only in the Sierras of Califor- 
nia, but northward to British America, and eastward through all the 
interior region of Utah, Nevada, New Mexico, Texas, Colorado, and . 
Nebraska, to the Missouri River. Itis a perennial, growing in dense 
tufts, whence its common name. 
. Tho culms are 1 to 2 feet high, with about three narrow, convolute leaves, the up- 
per one having a long, inflated sheath which incloses the base of the panicle. The 
radical leaves are narrow, rigid, and as long as or longer than the culm. The paficle : 
a is about 6 inches long, very loose, spreading and flexuous. The branches are in pairs, ; 
slender, rather distant, and are subdivided mostly in pairs. The spikelets are at 
the ends of the capillary branches, each one-flowered. The outer glumes are 3 to 
4 lines long, inflated and widened below, gradually drawn to a sharp-pointed _ 
apex, thin and colorless except the three or five green nerves, and slightly hairy. . 
The glumes inclose an ovate flower, which is covered externally with a profusion of 
white, silky hairs, and tipped with a short awn, which falls off at maturity. This 
apparent flower is the flowering glume, of a hard, coriaceous texture, and incloses a 
similar hard, but not hairy, and smaller palet. 
. 
In Montana it is one of the most esteemed bunch grasses, and thrives 
on soil too sandy for other valuable species. Professor Brewer states 
that in southern California it is called saccatoo or saccatoa. (Plate 39.) 
MILIUM. 
Spikelets panicled ; outer glumes membranaceous, equal and convex, the flowering 
glume and its palet coriaceous, much as in Panicum, but the articulation with the 
rhachis is above the outer glumes. All the glumes are unawned, and there is no ster- 
ile pedicel. 
