range management was literally in its infancy, 

 this bulletin provides unusually interesting 

 reading today for layman and scientist alike. 



These early studies in plant vigor stimulated 

 increasing interest to learn how plants re- 

 sponded to grazing. This, in turn, generated 

 great interest in study of lif e histories of numer- 

 ous range plant species and in a phenomenal 

 collecting of specimens for herbaria at the Sta- 

 tion, at District headquarters, and in Washing- 

 ton. Indeed, at one time, the Manti National 

 Forest had the reputation of being one of the 

 most intensely botanized Forests in the 

 Nation. 7 Plant collections from the Experi- 

 ment Station were numerous from the begin- 

 ning through the 1940's and the corre- 

 spondence between Lincoln Ellison and 

 William A. Dayton and other taxonomists was 

 voluminous. The plant collections and the re- 

 sulting herbarium were very helpful in famili- 

 arizing both researchers and managers with the 

 species on the range and their interrela- 

 tionships. 



When C. L. Forsling succeeded Sampson as 

 Director of the Great Basin Station in 1922, 

 interest in the plant vigor experiments was still 

 running high. He believed the study should be 

 continued but more nearly in line with actual 

 grazing practice. Accordingly, he devised an ex- 

 perimental project in which sheep would graze 

 a pasture until the forage had been utilized to a 

 predetermined degree. Then the pasture would 

 be allowed to recover. The grazing program was 

 designed to match the 24 types of harvesting 

 that had already been done with shears at the 

 Station's forage nursery. 



For this project Forsling selected a location 

 at the head of the Cove Fork of Ferron Canyon, 

 about 6 miles south of the Alpine Station. On a 

 virtually level terrace about 100 feet below the 

 present Skyline Drive and on the east side of 

 the Divide, he laid out and fenced three con- 

 tiguous 20-acre pastures (fig. 12). These were 



^This statement was made in a letter by W. R. 

 Chapline, dated April 8, 1924. He stated further: 

 "The Washington Office records indicate that the first 

 plant collection reached here from the Manti in Sep- 

 tember, 1912, so that collecting has taken place there 

 for at least 12 years. Altogether we have record of 27 

 collections on the Manti, embracing 1365 speci- 

 mens ..." 



called the Cove Paddocks. The sheep-grazing 

 experiments began in 1923 and continued 

 through several seasons. Fieldwork here vir- 

 ually ceased in 1932 and the paddocks were 

 later abandoned. Despite careful design and 

 control of the grazing procedures and despite 

 the fact that volumes of data were collected 

 from several detailed reconnaissances and were 

 elaborately analyzed, no publication about this 

 project appeared. The slow response of moun- 

 tain vegetation to treatment was still not recog- 

 nized by these early researchers. If these experi- 

 ments had been continued long enough, change 

 in vegetation due to the treatments might have 

 occurred. 



■ Studies of 

 Poisonous Plants 



Presence of poisonous plants was at least a 

 nuisance, at worst a plague on mountain range- 

 land. 8 Sometimes, poisonous plants fill in areas 

 where desirable species have been killed off, 

 especially by overgrazing. Great increase in poi- 

 sonous plants is often a symptom of over- 

 grazing. Some of these plants are unpalatable 

 and are eaten only when animals are desper- 

 ately hungry; thus they persist on ranges after 

 associated nonpoisonous plants have been 

 grazed out. 



Since tall larkspur (Delphinium barbeyi) 

 was a poisonous tall forb found most com- 

 monly on the Wasatch Plateau, Sampson de- 

 signed a study to determine feasible methods 

 for eradicating it. This plant starts growth each 

 year from buds that sprout from the collar of 

 the parent root; so Sampson theorized that if 

 the aerial stems were cut at the right time — 

 when the root contained the least stored 

 food — it might sufficiently weaken the roots 

 as reproductive parts so that the plant would 

 die from lack of food and from the competition 

 of neighboring healthy plants. Results of 

 studies on plots Sampson established in 1913 



B Earl V. Storm in 1919 reported annual losses of 

 6,000 cattle and 16,000 sheep within National For- 

 ests due to eating poisonous plants. 



23 



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