THE AGRICULTURAL GRASSES OF THE UNITED STATES. 59 



ennial, growing' usually 2 to 3 feet high, ^Yith rather slender culms, and 

 slightly hairy joints. The leaves are very narrow and convolute, rather 

 rough and rigid, the lower ones about half the length of the culm. The 

 pauicle is rather narrow, but open and loose, usually about 6 inches 

 long, at first sheathed by the upper leaf, but becoming exerted ; the 

 branches are slender, in pairs, and flower-bearing above the middle. 

 The spikelets, as in the preceding, are single-flowered, the outer glumes 

 about half an inch long, very narrow, three-nerved, and long,}fine-pointed. 

 The flowering glume is very similar to that of the preceding, rather 

 shorter and smaller, with a ring of very short hairs at the apex, and 

 with an awn about an inch long, which readily separates from its glume. 

 (Plate 40.) 



Stipa spartea and Stipe comata are two species, also called bunch 

 grasses, which prevail from British America southward, on the plains 

 and in the mountain region, very similar in general appearance to the 

 preceding, but usually with longer awns, sometimes 6 inches long. 



Mr. Eobert Miller Christy, writes about these grasses in Manitoba, 

 where they are common, that there is much complaint concerning them 

 among stockmen on account of the injury they do to shetp by the pene- 

 tration into their wool, and even into the flesh, of the sharp-pointed and 

 barbed awns of the seeds. 



Stipa avenacea is the only species prevailing in the Eastern and South- 

 ern States. It is more slender than those previously mentioned, and 

 grows sparsely in open woods or on rocky hills. It is of no agricultural 

 importance. 



Eriocoma cuspidata. (Bunch grass.) 



This grass has a -sv^de distribution, not only on the Sierras of Cali- 

 fornia, but northward to British America, and eastward through all the 

 interior region of Utah, iTevada, Kew Mexico, Texas, Colorado, and 

 i^ebraska to the Missouri Eiver. It is a perennial, growing in dense 

 tufts, whence its common name of bunch grass. The culms are 1 to 2 

 feet high, with about three narrow, convolute leaves, the upper one 

 having a long, inflated sheath which incloses the base of the pauicle. 

 The radical leaves are narrow, rigid, and as long as or longer than the 

 culm. The panicle 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 three to 

 four 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 cov- 

 ered 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. (Plate 41.) 



