Buffalograss is perennial, short, grey-green grass with many branching stolons and very fine and numerous roots. It forms a dense sod. Leaves are crispy, sparsely hairy, 1 to 2 mm wide, 5 to 13 cm high, in the southern Plains up to 30 cm high. Flower stem is 10 to 20 cm tall. The male inflorescence is a panicle, the female one is a cluster of two to four spikelets, 5 to 15 mm long. Buffalograss grows on dry plains. It ranges from northeast Montana, North Dakota and northwest Minnesota to southern Louisiana and northern Mexico.
BLUE GRAMA
Bouteloua gracilis
family: Grass (Poaceae)
The common Cheyenne word for prairie grass is ma'ō'ėstse ("red plants"). Cheyennes named them with reference to ferruginous color of this grass in autumn (Petter 1915: 521–2).
Blue grama is perennial, grey-green, densely bunched, erect grass, 15 to 30 cm high. Its roots reach to 2 m deep. Leaves are flat or loosely infolded, 1 to 2 mm wide. One plant has two inflorescence mostly, sometimes one or three. It is unilateral cluster, 2,5 to 5 cm long. Blue grama grows on the high plains from Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba to northern Mexico and southern California.
LITTLE BLUESTEM
Andropogon scoparius syn. Schizachyrium scoparium var. scoparium
family: Grass (Poaceae)
ma'ō'ėstse ("red plants"), common name for prairie grass
Little bluestem is 45 to 135 tall, perennial grass. Stems are unbranching or little branching, green to purple. Leaves are 15 to 45 cm long, 2 to 8 mm wide, pointed, glabrous to hairy. Inflorescences are spikelets, 25 to 75 mm long. Long awns protrude from the spikelet. Little bluestem blossoms from August to October. It grows on dry, sandy soils. It ranges from southern Canada to California, Mexico, and the Mexican Gulf.
In 1800’s when Cheyennes adapted to nomadic and hunting way of life, their surviving and prosperity depended on horses to a great extent. At that time, a common Cheyenne band owned thousand-headed herd of horses therefore it had to seek for a camping place where a good pasture was. Mostly, it used to be along rivers or creeks where the highest, thickest, and the most quality grass. Cheyennes sought especially for grama grasses (Bouteloua sp.), bluestems (Andropogon sp.), and buffalograss whose mixed populations don’t cover small, isolated sites only but coherent areas tens of hectares wide (Moore 1996: 48–9).
Grama, bluestem, and buffalograss range together abundantly from central Texas, over western Oklahoma, Kansas, and Nebraska to the Black Hill area. Buffalograss is abundant as far as northeast Wyoming and eastern foothills of the Rocky Mountains. Bluestem is abundant as far as southern North Dakota and Missouri River (Moore 1987: 158). The mentioned territories was occuppied by Cheyennes between 1780 and 1870.
