Luxuriant Beargrass

Luxuriant Beargrass
The Lewis and Clark
Fort Mandan Foundation, Washburn, North Dakota

There is a great abundance of a speceis of bear-grass which grows on every part of these mountains," wrote Lewis on 15 June 1806. "It's growth is luxouriant and continues green all winter but the horses will not eat it." He and his men must have seen it the previous autumn as they walked or rode horseback through the Bitterroot Mountains between Lost Trail Pass and Weippe Prairie, but this was the first time he had seen it in bloom, and the first time he could have compared it with the species he had known near his boyhood homes in the southern Appalachian Mountains.1

About That Name
Eleven other plant species share the common name, beargrass.2 The ten in the genus Nolina more closely resemble the Spanish bayonet, or Yucca glauca, of the West. The eastern species, Xerophyllum asphodeloides (L.) Nutt. is locally known as turkeybeard. Where or when Lewis came to call it beargrass is not known.3 In any case, his association of the Rocky Mountain species with its eastern counterpart, even on an admittedly superficial level, is one more example of his native ability as a naturalist.

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