Dr. Scribner, I presume...

Last week Carl Keener and I visited the prairie in search of a few of the rarer grasses that have been reported there. The prairie is steadily shrinking and each year brings the risk that another of the rare plants will finally be shaded out and lost from the prairie, so our success was far from certain. However, hopes were high as we began our search and we were soon rewarded by finding not a grass, but a new spot where a single Ladies Tresses orchid was blooming. This fall I have seen four of the tiny, distinctive blooms at four scattered locations on the prairie. Each six-inch stalk rises directly from the ground (the leaves are gone at this time of the year) and holds many tiny, white blossoms that are unmistakably orchids if you look closely enough. The blossoms are arranged in a spiral around the stalk which is surely the origin of the name of the genus: Sprianthes. These plants are reportedly the Southern Slender Ladies Tresses Orchid (Spiranthes lacera var. gracilis), a species which is by no means common but isn't among the rarest plants found at the prairie. I'll post a picture of the orchid.

The rarest plants at the prairie include Scribner's Panic grass (Panicum oligosanthes). This unassuming little plant, which to be honest looks a lot like crab grass, is found widely across the center of the continent but is known from only two locations in Centre County, and no PA locations west of Centre County. Dr. Keener and I set out to find this grass and identify it and a few of the other small panic grasses that grow at the site. I really should say that we both set out to find grasses, but only Dr. Keener really endeavored to identify them. The identification of panic grasses is tricky, so I am happy to leave it to the pros. We managed to find a few plants that appeared to represent at least a couple of different species of Panicum. Back at the Penn State herbarium Dr. Keener was able to identify two specimens as Panicum oligosanthes, presumably the subspecies (var. scribnerianum) known as Scribner's panic grass. Another specimen was identified as Panicum capillare sensu lato. The classification of panic grasses is complex, but this species includes the plant knows as Gattinger's Panic Grass that others have reported from the prairie.

I'm sure most of my readers are thinking that it would be great to have an obscure grass named after yourself, so I did a little digging to find out just who Scribner and Gattinger were to merit a plant name. My five minutes of internet research indicates that Frank Lamson Scribner was chief of the Division of Agrostology, US Department of Agriculture. On 1883 he participated in a plant collecting trip through Montana and described the panic grass that is named after him. Scribner also described (and therefore named) Gattinger's Panic grass, but I do not know who Gattinger was. Another few minutes on the internet was required for me to learn that Agrostology is the study of grasses.

If anyone reads this far you must be very interested in eponymous grasses of xeric limestone prairies (I'm sure there is an internet forum on the subject), so here is one additional tidbit. It turns out that the most characteristic grass of the prairie (Sideoats grama - Bouteloua curtpiendula) is named after either Claudio or Esteban Boutelou, who were spanish agriculturalists and gardeners.