Dave Hallock, Eldora.  The words from the song America the Beautiful provide a pastoral image of the American landscape: spacious skies, waves of grain, majestic mountains and fruitful plains. In the Nederland area we live with the mountains and skies on a daily basis.

While one may not consider our grasslands to resemble waves of grain, they should not be overlooked. At first sight, grasses may not catch your eye like many of our wildflowers, but in the larger picture of things, grasses make much of the world go around. As one trains their senses to look at the finer details of our landscape, sometimes with the help of a hand lens, you may see a subtler beauty in the form and shape of some of our most important ground covering plants.

How are grasses important to nature and people? Grasses are the source of most human food; corn, wheat, rice, oats, barley, and millet are all members of the grass family. Even if you eat lots of beef, the critter you are eating probably fattened itself up on some member of the grass family. Grasses are a major source of wildlife forage; buffalo, elk, bighorn sheep, bear, antelope and deer will all eat grass for most or a portion of their diet. Many small mammals eat plants, including grasses. Many bird species eat the seeds of grass and will utilize the stems for their nests. Grasses are the plants most responsible for holding the world’s soil in place.

Where are grasses found? On a continental scale, grasslands are found generally in places with low precipitation, cold climates and fine-textured soils. In Boulder County we find grasslands in its eastern third, where low precipitation favors grasses over trees. This is the western edge of the Great Plains, sometimes referred to as the Great American Desert. Grasses are also the dominant vegetation above 11,400’ in the Indian Peaks area, where the cold alpine climate and short growing season favor tundra grasses. The area is inhospitable to Engelmann spruce, subalpine fir and limber pine trees found just below.

Between these two continental features, grasses are found in smaller patches, generally called meadows, where soil depth and texture (again, generally fine-textured), favor grasses over trees. Grasses may be mixed with trees, particularly where the trees have an open canopy allowing light to reach the forest floor. Environmental disturbances, such as fire, can also influence where grasses are found. A hillside of scattered trees will remain open with periodic ground fires, allowing grasses to cover much of the ground. A dense forest that burns may turn into a meadow for 20 or so years, until trees can regenerate and once again take over the site. Aspen groves will generally have a significant grass component to its groundcover.

Meadows and grasslands are generally a mix of wildflowers and grasses. Disturbed sites are often colonized by wildflowers, while certain grasses will be dominant in a climax plant community. Various types of shrubs may also be a component of a meadow or grassland community.

Identifying individual grass species is an art unto itself. Tools of the trade include a hand lens, tweezers, and a field guide. Sometimes, having a microscope at home can be very helpful in grass identification. Also, it is necessary to learn a new vocabulary: rachis, spike, panicle, internode, lemma, awn and glume are just a few of the terms encountered. But upon making the effort to learn about grasses, you enter a new world of beauty (especially when looking at plant parts through a hand lens) and gain new knowledge about our ecology.

Locally, some of our more common native grasses include mountain muhly (Muhlenbergia montana), Parry oatgrass (Danthonia parryi), Thurber fescue (Festuca thurberi), several types of needlegrass (Stipa species), several types of wheatgrass (Agropyron species), junegrass (Koeleria macrantha), several types of bluegrass (Poa species), bluejoint reedgrass (Calamagrostis canadensis) and tufted hairgrass (Deschampsia caespitosa). The latter two species are generally found in wetter habitat than the others.

Sizeable meadows were some of the first places homesteaded in the mountains when the pioneers arrived in the 1860s. Arapaho Ranch, Barker Meadow, Caribou Ranch, Tolland Ranch, Tucker Ranch, Scates Ranch and Reynolds Ranch all had grass and either a stream or springs that made them prime sites for living and making a living. Grasses were the oil of that era; if you had enough grass to hay, you could sell it to the miners, liveries and freight haulers. Bluejoint reedgrass was often mentioned in early accounts as an important grass for haying. You also had range for horses and cattle, as well as fine enough soil for growing some crops.

These land use activities brought changes to the range. Some of the native grasses, such as mountain muhly and Parry oatgrass, did not fare well under intense grazing pressure. Now, both of these grass types are considered imperiled in the American West.

Nonnative grasses began to be introduced to the land; some inadvertently and some intentionally. There was a major federal program in the early part of the 20th century that encouraged ranchers to plant several types of pasture grasses that originated in Europe: timothy (Phleum pratense), Kentucky bluegrass (Poa pratensis), orchard grass (Dactylis glomerata) and smooth brome (Bromopsis enermis).

Today, European pasture grasses are prevalent in most of our local meadows. The pasture grasses, tending to favor slightly wetter or shady sites, also dominate the understory of many of our aspen groves. In more recent times, reclamation projects of disturbed lands still often utilize nonnative grasses.

Locally, several sites stand out in my mind as the best remaining examples of meadows dominated by native grasses. The first two that come to mind are Arapaho Ranch and Tolland Ranch. Their dry meadows contain large stands of Parry oatgrass. It is a grass of medium height (½ to 1½ feet). Mountain muhly is also present in these meadows. Another site is west of Hessie in the portion of Woodland Flats north of the creek, which is traversed by the Devil’s Thumb Bypass Trail. This meadow is a mixture of Parry oatgrass, mountain muhly and Thurber fescue.

So, while taking the time to smell the roses of life, don’t forget to look at the amber waves of grain.

Looking ahead, August is normally a continuation of summer, but the last half can bring harbingers of fall, including the first frost and the appearance of yellow on a few aspen leaves. Most of our wildflowers will be past their peak, though the colors may linger with adequate moisture and mild temperatures. The yellow showy golden-eyes are one of the last composites to have a major bloom. Porter aster and owl-clover are also late-season bloomers.

This can also be a good month for blooming gentians; look for the white arctic gentian on the tundra. Warm season grasses, such as mountain muhly, bloom this month. Berries ripen; start looking for huckleberries during the last half of the month.

Like the flowers on which they depend, butterflies are also past their prime, but many will linger while the weather permits. The dark-colored small wood-nymphs will dominate mountain meadows. The yellow and orange Meade’s sulphurs will be active on the tundra. Look for the large black-and-white Weidemeyer’s admiral around aspen and willows.

Mammals will provide hints of fall. Elk will still be in their summer herds, but some bugling will occur toward the end of the month. Pine squirrels will start dropping cones from trees, building up their winter food reserves. Underground pocket gopher activity will increase, evidenced by more mounds of dirt in meadows. Black bear scat will begin to change in composition from grass to berries.

Birds are finishing getting their young out of the nest. They will start forming flocks with an eye toward migration. During the last two weeks of August and into September there is an upward migration of birds. Many sparrow species, bluebirds and raptors are seen on the tundra. The birds are feeding on crickets and grasshoppers, which become abundant at higher elevations.