It grows to 1 or 2 meters tall, and it blanketed the land one time, when Indians tried to fight the government.
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Botanical Wednesday: Greasy grass
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Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
To be fair, not THEIR government. And they were fighting an invading force that was ENTIRELY supported by the populace of the United States. Can’t blame this one on Washington – crushing the Indian nations was something the people wanted.
Caine wrote an excellent post at Affinity on the Battle at the Greasy Grass.
sundoga @1: You make it sound like the politicians only reluctantly supported it due to pressure from the public.
Not my intent. I’ve just noticed a tendency to blame such things on the politicos while forgetting that what those politicians were doing was wildly popular at the time. In a few cases it actually WAS local actors, but most of the worst of the Indian subjugation was Congressionally and Presidentially backed.
Good point sundoga – it’s easy for white Americans to forget that these were sovereign nations invaded by a foreign army, and that it was entire US system, its settlers, industrialists, bankers and politicians, that sent that army to terrorize the Lakota and Cheyenne.
On an ecological side – is there any old prairie land left as I’ve always been fascinated by the possibility that the Buffalo herds roaming before the white man wiped them out might actually have potentially been nearly as productive as the US beef industry that uses vast amounts of resources.
madtom1999:
Yes, there is, and it’s protected, more or less. It remains endangered from constant efforts at encroachment. As for Buffalo, yeah, as food source, and resource for much, much more, was working out just fine for us Indians until the white colonials came along and pulled their asshole “wee, how much carnage can we do” hunts.
Some of the Nations in the Dakotas are raising and keeping Buffalo now, but Buffalo need a whole lot of room. The Hunkpapa Lakota at Standing Rock have buffalo. You can read a bit about it here.
Right now, North Dakota is busy selling out to big oil all over, and destroying great swaths of land, so any dreams of Buffalo roaming back here? Forget it. It’s also Standing Rock who is most threatened by Dakota Access Pipeline, and is fighting, even though they are being sued right now.
I applaud the clever plant word play, though I admit I had to refresh my memory on the Latin meaning of flavus.
#7 Caine – thanks for that. I do wonder if prairie grass can exist without buffalo. There are stories of herds of buffalo of 30-50million. These must have moved like a tide across the land eating and defecating and maintaining a grassland ecology that required their presence. It seems the animals were much larger then so its quite possible that if there were two or more large herds then the productivity in terms of potential meat alone was on a par with the modern ‘scientific’ farming of beef which takes just over 100 million carcases a year!