June Grass

What’s growing in the area: Apricots, forsythia, first daffodils are blooming; cholla reverting to its normal green; piñon, arborvitae, weeping willow, needle and muhly ring grasses show new growth. People are still cleaning up from winter with more pruned branches laying about. Some were burning weeds yesterday morning. One person with a grassy yard has burned his entire area.
In my yard: Raspberry suckers, first tulips, Maltese cross have broken ground; small-leaved soapwort turning green; hyacinth buds still bundled into leaves.
What’s blooming inside: Aptenia, zonal geranium, kalanchoë, bougainvillea; coral honeysuckle in bud.
Animal sightings: White-tailed brown rabbit in drive Thursday morning.
Weather: Fewer nights were below freezing, more middling winds. Last rain 5 March; 12:39 hours of light today.
Weekly update: June grass is a camp follower. I no sooner put in my driveway, and there it was, next to my door. Then it tried to invade the garden, and finally settled along the edge of the west bed.
As I remember from M*A*S*H reruns, people who congregate on the periphery of miliary bases not only include those with something to sell, but also those seeking protection or other favors. When a distant kinsman of mine, William Woods Averell was posted to Fort Craig to protect the northern end of the Jornada del Muerto on the Camino Real from Apache in 1857, the biggest problems were not enough water and too much alcohol. The first was hauled up ramps from the river in wagons; he didn’t say who supplied the second.

Water is what attracts June grass. It needs at least 16" of precipitation a year, more than we get here. Its dark green leaves and rigid stalks would stand out if they grew on the prairie with the more flexible needle and rice grasses. Instead, the fibrous roots find pockets of moisture, then wait for the wind to break the stems to scatter seed far and wide. Eventually some lands along a road way where moisture collects and it can perpetuate itself.

Right now, after the winter snows and rains have passed, it’s putting out new growth from within its protective mass of dead leaves and cured stalks. The perennial will be blooming by early May, when the sheaths will open to reveal tightly packed chevrons of grains that will resemble corn in its husk. After the seeds have dropped, the cool weather grass stagnates during the heat of summer.

Koeleria macrantha may be widespread here and throughout the northern hemisphere, but it probably arrived here like any camp follower. Frank Kienast’s team found fossilized seeds on the Bykovsky peninsula near the mouth of the Lena river in eastern Siberia where permafrost erosion has exposed piles of hardened sediment that date back to the time when the last glaciers trapped water and exposed the Beringian land bridge that connected northeastern Asia and Alaska.

Kienast reports that steppe vegetation like June grass which supported large herbivores disappeared around 900 BC, killed by changes in moisture not temperature. It’s still found on the North slope of the Brooks range, and probably moved south with the climate. June grass may already have been here when mammoth hunters camped near Clovis some 11,000 years ago.

Like any camp follower dependent on others for its survival, June grass tries to anticipate and satisfy the expectations of potential patrons. The long, relatively wide blades look like lawn grass and stay green most of the year. However, it is a bunch grass, not one that spreads to fill in spaces at an even level. Even when plants are close to each other, it’s impossible to walk on them without falling into crevices between 3" high clumps.

Over time, habits of accommodation become second nature. When the environment changes, June grass passes on its adaptations through genetic changes. Czech plants have a 5% smaller genome than Slovakian ones. In Colorado, June grass transplanted from 12 locations, still differed when and how it grew. Philip Robertson and Richard Ward believe that moisture in the homeland was more important than altitude and the concomitant exposure to sun and growing season length in determining those habits.

Even though June grass must always adapt, this camp follower tries to recreate a familiar world behind its shield of external conformity. I’ve never been able to eradicate it from the west side of the house where flax and grape hyacinths grow. Kienast found June grass seed mixed with Alyssum obovatum, Silene repens, and perennial flax in ancient Siberia. Nick Hermann’s group found it growing with another Muscari in central Germany and the Czech Republic. Here the tall clumps create a protective border on the windward side for those early spring blue flowers, just beyond the demarcating bricks that define the camp perimeter.

Notes:
Averell, Willaim Woods. Ten Years in the Saddle, edited by Edward K. Eckert and Nicholas J. Amato, 1978.

Herrmann, Nick, Gabriele Weiss, Walter Durka. "Biological flora of Central Europe: Muscari tenuiflorum Tausch," Flora 201:81–101:2006.

Kienast, Frank, Lutz Schirrmeister, Christine Siegert and Pavel Tarasov. "Palaeobotanical Evidence for Warm Summers in the East Siberian Arctic During the Last Cold Stage," Quaternary Research 63:283-300:2005.

Pecinka, Ales, Pavla Suchánková,, Martin A. Lysak, Bohumil Trávníek and Jaroslav Doleel. "Nuclear DNA Content Variation among Central European Koeleria Taxa," Annals of Botany 98:117-122:2006.

Robertson, Philip A. and Richard T. Ward. "Ecotypic Differentiation in Koeleria Cristata (L).Pers. from Colorado and Related Area," Ecology 51:1083-1087:1970.

Photograph: June grass, 23 March 2008.