Western wheatgrass is a good forage for livestock and withstands flood and drought, which helped it become the official grass of Wyoming.

By Jennifer Frazer

rep8@wyomingnews.com

CHEYENNE - This just in: Wyoming has a new state grass.

It is - drum roll, please - western wheatgrass, which beat out blue grama to claim the title.

For those of you keeping track, wheatgrass will join the ranks of the esteemed state tree (the plains cottonwood), state bird (the meadowlark), state mammal (bison), and - if you've really been keeping track - the state dinosaur (triceratops) and the state fossil (a fish called Knightia).

Now western wheatgrass can grow a little taller and stand a little straighter knowing that it, too, has joined their illustrious ranks.

What is it about wheatgrass, you may ask, that makes it worthy above all other Wyoming grasses?

Well, quite a bit.

The grass makes good forage for livestock, is drought- and flood-tolerant and spreads by underground root-like runners called rhizomes that help stabilize the soil and fill in the space between bunch grasses.

That last fact is particularly significant, said Quentin Skinner, professor of rangeland ecology and watershed management at the University of Wyoming.

That's because most rhizomatous grasses live in wet habitats; western wheatgrass is one of the few that thrives in high, dry habitats.

The grass is also good for revegetation of salty, alkaline soils and reclaimed mines.

Its rhizomes also make it a good choice for erosion control; it helped prevent damage to earthen dams in Kansas when they were overrun by a 14-inch downpour, notes a Natural Resources Conservation Service fact sheet.

And the grass may bear some other uniquely Wyoming characteristics.

The fact sheet notes the grass, "performs poorly in the East and is not recommended for any use in the region," and "once established, it is very hardy and enduring."

So with all this going for it, why wasn't western wheatgrass installed as the state grass before?

Many people thought it was.

Skinner named it as the state grass on the cover of a textbook he wrote called, "Grasses of Wyoming," and it was on the department stationery for years.

"My major professor was Alan A. Beetle, and he was Mr. Grass of Wyoming," he said. "He forgot more grass taxonomy than I will ever know, and he called it our state grass too."

What seems to have caused the confusion was a resolution passed by a governor in the early 1950s naming it as the state grass.

But the grass never was formally invested by an act of the Legislature.

Enter Frank Maurer.

An ecologist, farmer and executive director of the Quail Ridge Wilderness Conservancy in California, Maurer had worked for years there to make purple needlegrass the state grass.

He did it, he said, not just for the sake of having a state grass but so that in fourth grade, when children learn about state history, teachers could instruct them on the importance of the state grass and grass ecology.

When he later visited Wyoming, he was so enthralled by what he saw that he bought land here. He is also a stone carver, he said, and presents stones carved with the state symbols to each state.

While researching Wyoming's, he noticed that unlike neighboring states, Wyoming had no state grass or, rather, Wyomingites thought they did but they didn't.

Maurer set about calling the right people to help make a Wyoming's state grass a reality - for the same educational reason he had worked on the state grass for California.

Senate File 106 was the result, though one of its sponsors, Sen. Gerald Geis, R-Worland, had hoped blue grama might become the state grass.

But opposing forces argued that, among other reasons, western wheatgrass was present in every county of the state and blue grama wasn't.

Western wheatgrass prevailed.

And Maurer's wish that the state grass inspire the teaching of the importance of grasses may come true.

Sarka White, education director for the state Department of Agriculture and Wyoming Agriculture in the Classroom, said she plans to incorporate the grass into their fourth-grade programs. They will discuss why the grass was chosen, and what it means to the state of Wyoming.

But rest assured, though western wheatgrass now has clinched the state grass title, the battle for state emblems could heat up again.

After all, it was just a few years ago that legislators fought over a bill to create a state mythical creature: the jackalope.

It failed.

That title, at least, is still up for grabs.