Feather Grass

Weather: In one week the weather’s gone from too cold and windy to work outside to too hot; from not being able to work until 9 am, to having to go in around 8:30 am. Everything that blooms is dispirited. Last rain: 5/26/14.

What’s blooming in the area: Austrian copper, Dr Huey, pink species, yellow species and hybrid roses, yellow potentilla, silver lace vine, red hot poker, chives, peony, oriental poppy, Jupiter’s beard, pink evening primrose, blue flax, sweet pea, purple-flowered salvia, yellow yarrow.

Virginia creeper, grapes, catalpas and black locusts releafing after cold the morning of May 14.

Beyond the walls and fences: Tamarix, alfilerillo, western stickseed, bractless cryptantha, tumble mustard, tufted white evening primrose, purple mat flower, fern leaf globemallow, oxalis, pink and white bindweed, amaranth, goat’s beard, native and common dandelions, cheat, needle, feather, rice and June grasses.

In my yard: Fragrant privet, beauty bush, skunkbush, Johnson’s Blue geranium, Bath pinks, snow-in-summer, golden spur columbine, vinca, pink-flowered salvia, catmint, Dutch white clover, baptisia, chocolate flower, white yarrow.

Finally put seeds in this week. Hope the winds have finally died down and the rain penetrated enough for them to germinate.

Bedding plants: Pansies.

Animal sightings: Gecko, small birds, ladybugs, more grasshoppers than usual, harvester and small black ants. Not see any bees yet.

Weekly update: Feather grass is blooming. Most of the year, it’s indistinguishable from its sibling, needle grass. But for the few short weeks it’s in flower, it’s very distinct. While Hesperostipa comata looks like seaweed lapped by water, this resembles the frozen trail of a sparkler on the Fourth of July.

Hesperostipa neomexicana has been in my yard as long as I’ve live here, but usually as a specimen in the gravel by my garage. This year, it’s in a line along the eastern edge of the turn area.

I don’t know if it’s dispersion is the result of the earth mover that built the turn area by moving gravel from the garage area or if seed came with the new gravel delivered from an area on the other side of the Río Grande near Santa Clara.

I’m fairly sure its proliferation this year is the result of last fall’s rains that soaked the seed enough for it to germinate.

The two are members of the Eurasian Stipa tribe within the grass family. The Hesperostipa evolved early, but after the North American continental mass had broken away. They both are found only in the New World.

Needle grass grows is almost every state and province west of the Mississippi or north of the Ohio. Feather grass is concentrated in New Mexico and Arizona, with some spillage into southeastern Nevada, southern Utah and Colorado, and the Edwards Plateau down into Coahuila.

The seed tails or awns, with their arrow-like hairs, seem to prefer rocky soils. Researchers at Utah State University associate the perennial with grasslands that occur "in the narrow to broad transition band between the Rocky Mountains and the Shortgrass Steppe" between 5000' and 7000'. It’s found on the hog backs of the mountain’s front range and in the Chalk Bluffs near the Colorado-Wyoming border.

Paul Peterson and others found the bunch grass on rocky, limestone slopes in Coahuila at 7100'.

In New Mexico, Jeremy McClain and Tessia Robbins found it in the Sandía foothills in gravelly to sandy loam at about 5700'. West of the river, in the Petroglyph National Monument, it’s a dominant grass on the glacial washes, late Pleistocene alluvium, that occur below the mesa in the northern section.

It’s not exactly rare, but it is a victim of overgrazing. "The largest protected stands are likely to be in" the monument boundaries. My yard is one of the smallest protected areas.

Notes:
Jacobs, Surrey, Randall Bayer, Joy Everett, Mirta Arriaga, Mary Barkworth, Alexandru Sabin-Badereau, Amelia Torres, Francisco Va´ Zquez, and Neil Bagnall. "Systematics of the Tribe Stipeae (Gramineae) Using Molecular Data," Aliso 23:349-361:2007.

Muldavin, E., Y. Chauvin, L. Arnold, T. Neville, P. Arbetan and P. Neville. Vegetation Classification and Map: Petroglyph National Monument (2012).

Smithsonian Institution. Department of Botany has the specimens collected in New Mexico by J. McClain and T. Robbins, and in Coahuila by Paul M. Peterson, J. M. Saarela, Konstantyn Romaschenko and J. Valdés-Reyna at Mpio, Saltillo.

Utah State University. Southwest Regional Gap Analysis Project. On-line description of "S086 Western Great Plains Foothill and Piedmont Grassland"

Photographs:
1-5. Feather grass along the edge of my drive, 29 May 2014.

6. Needle grass in my back yard, 23 May 2012.

Needle Grass

What’s happening: New leaves on oriental poppies, south facing hollyhocks, dandelions and June grass; small leaved soapwort and yellow evening primrose leaves turning green.

What’s green: Evergreen, yucca, grape hyacinth, Jupiter’s beard, gypsum phacelia, pink evening primrose, winecup, tansy and tumble mustard. broom senecio, snakeweed, black-eyed Susan, chrysanthemum leaves; cheat and needle grass.

What’s grey, blue-grey or grey-green: Piñon, four-winged salt bush, stickleaf, yellow alyssum and winterfat leaves.

What’s red/turning red: Cholla, Madonna lily, golden spur columbine, beardstongue, creeping mahonia leaves; rose and young tamarix stems.

What’s yellow/turning yellow: Globe and weeping willow branches.

What’s blooming inside: Bud on pomegranate; new growth on asparagus fern

Animal sightings: Rabbit; small brown birds back in peach.

Weather: Clouds that hovered for several days finally dropped some water Monday night; snow lingers in Jemez and Sangre de Cristo; 12:09 hours of daylight today.

Weekly update: The first sign of spring on the prairie is new growth at the base of the needle grass. Sandy brown tops still dominate the horizon, but new shoots are emerging among stalks that themselves are greening below.

Even so, there’s probably more going on underground than above at this time. As the perennials increase their photosynthesis, mycorrhizal fungi gather round the roots to absorb carbon. In exchange, they pass through phosphorus they’ve extracted from the soil that’s needed by the grass to produce DNA, RNA, cell walls and energy transport systems.

The symbiosis is as old as land plants. They’ve found fossils of fungus associated with other plants in the Rhynie chert beds of Scotland that date back 400 million years ago. By the Miocene, when grasses were emerging, the mycorrhizae had assumed their modern form. Hesperostipa comata migrated from the neotropics into our region before the end of that era.

While the cool season bunch grass is dependent on the existence of the small organisms, the range of the fungi is limited by the presence of phosphorus. The structure of the plants varies by the amount of the available mineral. However, they cannot tolerate the high levels introduced by farmers.

The fungi also die when animals eat the blades, thereby decreasing the volume of carbon fed to them. Gabor J. Bethlenfalvay and Suren Dakessian compared plants growing in adjacent protected and unprotected areas on a recovering range. They found leaves on grazed plants only appeared around the perimeter of the crown, while uneaten plants produced full tufts with “hundreds of well developed leaf blades.”

They also found phosphorus levels were lower in the ungrazed soil, a measure of the presence of vesicular-arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi. When the tiny organisms disappear, there’s nothing left to provide vital nutrients. The shallow, fibrous roots decline in weight, though not as much as the greens they support.

Ranchers are told it’s safe to graze their animals on needle grass in early spring, when it’s one of the earliest plants available, and again in fall, when it’s resumed growth after the monsoons. The stalks cure well, and are considered good winter feed.

Most cattle and sheepmen move their animals when seeds develop in late spring, usually early May here. Not only do the seeds have harpoon points that break off when they embed themselves in skin and wool, but they’re carried by long tails that twist with moisture.

After the seeds are ripe, the grasses go dormant during the heat, and their protein levels drop. It’s then that continued grazing destroys life above and below ground, to little benefit of the mammals.

Once the grass dies, it takes at least ten years to come back, even when carefully seeded and watered. After that initial period, stands still only expand slowly.

In my yard, the overgrazed sections may never revive. One reason may be that, despite the long life expectancy of the seed, not many actually accumulate in the soil. In addition, those seeds that do survive need cold to emerge and possibly fire. Robert Blank and James Young found seeds germinate better when the soil is heated more than 500 degrees or they are exposed to smoke.

Only some of those conditions will be met here.

Notes:
Bethlenfalvay, Gabor J. and Suren Dakessian. “Grazing Effects on Mychorrhizal Colonization and Floristic Composition on a Semiarid Range in Northern Nevada,” Journal of Range Management 37:312-316 :1984.

Blank, Robert R. and James A. Young. “Heated Substrate and Smoke: Influence on Seed Emergence and Plant Growth,” Journal of Range Management 51:577-583:1998.

Dick-Peddie, William A. New Mexico Vegetation, 1993, on needle grass as neotropic-tertiary flora.

Wikipedia. On-line entry for “Arbuscular Mycorrhiza.”

Zlatnik, Elena. “Hesperostipa comata,” 1999, in United States Forest Service, Fire Effects Information System, available on-line.

Photograph: Needle grass at the edge of my drive with greening stalks and new sprouts, 12 March 2011.

Grasses

What’s blooming in the area: Yucca, datura, white evening primrose, velvetweed, white sweet clover, golden hairy aster, hawkweed; goatsbeard, horseweed, wild lettuce, milkweed, bindweed, buffalo gourd, purple coneflower, sweet pea, roses, daylilies, bouncing Bess, Russian sage, trumpet creeper, silverlace vine, grama grass, rice grass, three-awn grass.

What’s blooming in my garden, looking north: Black eyed Susan, blanket flower, golden spur columbine, lance-leaf coreopsis, chocolate flowers, perky Sue, Hartweg evening primrose, fern-leaf yarrow, Mexican hat, miniature rose (Sunrise).

Looking east: Biennial yellow evening primrose, California poppy, winecup, coral bells, cheddar pink, small and large flowered soapworts, coral beardtongue, hollyhock, sweet alyssum from seed taller than bedding plants.

Look south: Butterfly gladiola, rugosa roses.

Look west: Asiatic lily, perennial four o’clock, white spurge, catmint, blue flax, purple ice plant.

Bedding plants: Dalhburg daisies, marigolds, sweet alyssum, snapdragons, petunias, profusion zinnias, supersweet 100 tomato.

Animal sightings: Power line bird, small green hummingbird, geckoes, squash bug, aphids, ants, grasshoppers, bees, black widow. Sheep are still down the road. Something, either the rabbit or gopher, is attacking the tomatoes; seedlings to west sprout in night, disappear by afternoon.

Weather: Afternoon storms blow over, keep days from getting too hot; rain late Monday and Saturday evening. Pulled out foot high Russian thistles; neighbor’s pigweed has sprouted a foot since it was cut down last weekend. Should be good day to weed.

Weekly update: Now the heat’s set in, and the flowers of June are gone, replaced with what Lady Bird Johnson called the dang yellow composites. I’ve done all I can to plant and sow, and now must wait, provide water and eliminate weeds. I’ve turned my attention to my grasses, which are so dry they crack when they’re stepped on.

When I bought my land, the upward, northern section was primarily ring muhly grass, while the downhill area to the south was fairly pure needle grass with scattered clumps of blue grama or rice grass. After the house was relocated, I reclaimed the land to the west by moving needle grass that was in the way of the garage.

Over time, winterfat grew along the driveways and June grass crept in along the brick edging of the western border. Otherwise, the native vegetation was fine until the drought after the Cerro Grande Fire, when the ring muhly died. Yellowbrush and stickseed whitebristle moved in. Last summer, the needle grass to the west died, and winterfat and stickseed threaten.

About two years ago, people started using the prairie land to the south for ATVs, and Russian thistle is colonizing the bare spots. This spring, my wire fence was solid with dead tumbleweeds waiting to blow in. I figure I had only a short time to avoid losing my last section of prairie.

A couple weeks ago, I replaced the farm fence with cedar board. The fence builders churned up the soil, and stomped on most of the grass within 3 feet of the fence. In two days, they did more damage than the ATVs in as many summers. I immediately started hosing the area along the fence late in the day to revive the grass that was stepped on.

Interestingly, the ring muhly is coming back on its own. Apparently, it needs cool weather to grow, and this is the first year since the drought after the Los Alamos fire that conditions have been right.

The bunch grasses, on the other had, seem to need water. In good years, the seed stalks get to 4' and wave in the wind. This year they’re about a foot high, with far fewer seeds. Before the rain on Monday, the area by the fence already showed signs of recovery. Now, we’ll see if last night’s rain is enough to save the rest.

Note: Actually, Lady Bird was more colorful in her description of the DYCs, and was quoting one of the experts she hired to help her with her roadside wildflower program. See, Lady Bird Johnson and Carlton B. Lees, Wildflowers across America (1989).