84 THE AGRICULTURAL GRASSES 0^ THE UNITED STATES. 



erii States. It affords a small amooiit of grazing daring tlie summer. 

 Professor Phares says : 



Its growth is very rapid, altbouoli it has little root and is easily uprooted. Al- 

 though it coiitaius a good perceutage of nutritious matter, it is of little agricnltural 

 value. Its assurgeut leaves and stems and immensely large panicles occupy so much 

 space that a comparatively small number of plants would occupy an acre of ground, 

 while it has so little weight that the product of several acres of the finest growth of 

 it would be required to produce a single ton of hay. 



(Plate 80.) 



BucHLOE DACTYLOIDES. (Buffalo grass, False Mesquite grass.) 



This grass is extensively spread over all the region known as the great 

 plains. It is very low, the bulk of leaves seldom rising more than 3 or 4 

 inches above the ground, growing in extensive tufts or patches, and 

 spreading largely by means of stolons or offshoots similar to those of 

 Bermuda grass, these stolons being sometimes 2 feet long, and with 

 joints every 3 or 4 inches, frequently rooting and sending up flowering 

 culms from the joints. The leaves of the radical tults are 3 to 5 inches 

 loug, one or one-half line wide, smooth, or edged with a few scattering 

 hairs. The flowering culms are chiefly dioecious, but sometimes both 

 male and female flowers are found on the same plant but in separate 

 parts. The flowering stems of the male plant are 4 to 8 inches high, 

 bearing three or four slender leaves, and at the summit two to four" 

 short contiguous spikes, which are about half an inch long. These 

 spikes consist usually of five to six sessile spikelets, alternate, in two 

 rows, on the lower side of the flattened, scabrous axis. The spikelets 

 are two to three lines long and mostly two-flowered. The outer glumes 

 are unequal and one-nerved, the lower one half as long as the flower 

 above it, the upper one shorter. The flowering glumes and palets are 

 of equal length, membranaceons, the flowering glume three-nerved, the 

 palet two-nerved. The flowering stalk of the female plant is shorter 

 than the leaves, 1 to 2 or sometimes 3 or 4 inches high, sometimes 

 almost concealed among the leaves at the joints of the stolons. The 

 sheaths of the two or three uppermost leaves of the culm are dilated 

 and inclose the spikes or clusters of flowers. Of these spikes there are 

 two or three, each consisting of three to five spikelets. The spikelets 

 are single-flowered and of a somewhat complex structure, the parts 

 analagous to those of the male flowers, but thickened, indurated, and 

 modified. All the upper glumes are indurated and united at their bases 

 with the thickened axis, the lower glume of the lowest spikelet being 

 lanceolate, with an herbaceous tip or two to three cleft, thickened and 

 united to the upper glume, the lower glume of the other spikelets free, 

 much smaller, ovate-lanceolate, acute, and one-nerved, the flowering 

 glume shorter, three-nerved, and three-toothed at the summit. 



It is hardly necessary to recapitulate the virtues of this widely cele- 

 brated grass. It plays an important part in the feeding and fattening 

 of the vast herds of cattle, which have now mostly displaced the buttalo, 

 whose favorite food it was supi)osed to be. 



