There is a Beetle Hiding in the Mexican Grass

Item Type text; Article

Authors Beetle, A. A.

Citation Beetle, A. A. (1982). There is a beetle hiding in the Mexican grass. Rangelands, 4(3), 103-104.

Publisher Society for Range Management

Journal Rangelands

Rights Copyright © Society for Range Management.

Download date 24/09/2021 19:07:28

Item License http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

Version Final published version

Link to Item http://hdl.handle.net/10150/638347 Rangelands4(3), June 1982 103 There is a Beetle Hiding in the Mexican Grass

A.A. Beetle

This is a chronicle of a love affair with , , ancient European botanical gardens, Muhienbergia mexi- and Mexican grasses. It began as long ago as the late 1930's cana, so well known in the United States, does not occur in and continues today. We (those wonderful grassesand I) Mexico and Elymus mexicana is a synonym of an Old World have just celebrated our 43rd anniversary and are looking species not known anywhere in the New World. forward to many more. Fournier organizedmany herbaria which belongedto Sun- Mexico lies north and south of the Tropicof Cancer and is day botanists—amateurswho had as a hobby and a land of sandy seacoastsand snowy mountains; of cane collected mostly at exotic landmarkslike Mount Orizabaon fields and pine forests; of mesquite flats and oakwood hills. the boundary between Pueblaand Veracruzor at health spas There are over 1,000 different species of grasses many of like Temescaltepecoutside of Mexico City. Fournier'sover- which are cosmopolitan, others exhibiting a high degreeof simplified key for 17 species of Agrostis is a century old individuality and endemism. headachebut therein his grass collectors surviveasAgrostis There have been many caught up into the same fascina- berlandieri, Agrostis bourgei, Agrostis ghiesbreghtii, Agros- tion. The first was a Frenchman named Fournier. I do not tis Iiebmanii, or Agrostis schaffneri, shadowy Old World know how he came to be interested, or even if he ever saw namesfrom an already dim past. His name is retained in the Mexico. His book was published in 1886in Paris, France.His Aristida forA. fournieriana, a Mexican endemic. 643 names in 126 genera bear little resemblanceto species Jumping from Fournier (1886) to Hitchcock (1913, Mexi- and generic names recognized today. Of his 23 "mexicana" can Grasses in the United States National Herbarium) we species, about five survive today: Brachypodium mexicana, find the Hitchcock listof 6l5speciesin l3ogenera issmaller, Eragrostis mexicana, Zeugites mexicana, Metcalfia mexi- a remarkablecircumstance considering 23 new species are cana, and Euchlaenamexicana. Becauseof seed mixups in described. Hitchcock (cf.Aristida hitchcockiana and Digita- na hitchcockii) did extensivepersonal collecting in Mexico, Author is with the Comision Tecnico Consultiva para Ia Determinacion a fund of American collections. Regional de los Coeficientesde Agostadero,APDO Postal284, Hermosillo, supplementing growing He, , Mexico. and his ever faithful lady Friday, Mrs. Agnes Chase (cf. About the author: Dr. Beetle has degrees from Dartmouth, University of Bouteloua chasei) built the SmithsonianMuseum collection , and a Ph.D.from the Universityof . He was head of the in D.C., into one of the world's centers RangeManagement Division, university ofWyoming, from 1946 til his retire- Washington, primary ment in 1978. His title is now Emeritus. With this newtitle he is enjoynghimself for the study of Mexican grasses, a position maintained and other in Mexico and other fun studying grasses range places. today first through the effortsof Jason Swallen(cf. Swalleni-

Anthephora hermaphrodita Aristida schiedeana Andropogon brevifolius Poa villaroeli 104 - Rangelands4(3), June 1982

Setaria adhaerans Setariopsislatiglumis Paspalumhintoni Sporobolus atrovirens

ana) and now through the research of Thomas Soderstrom ming range management students, vacations with family (cf. Soderstromia). membersdrafted as collectors, and a sabbatical leave to the Some of Hitchcock's contemporaries were Sunday bota- Instituto Tecnologico de Monterrey under the sponsorship nists but a high percentage were serious collectors, and of a Rockefellerresearch grant. The tripscontinued until all most of them were from the United States of America. The 28 states of Mexico had been explored at least once, many, undisputed best of them all was a New Englander named like , with great intensity. Cyrus GuernseyPringle (see Davis, Helen Burns, 1936, Life A collecting number series was started in 1962, M-1, and and work of Cyrus Guernsey Pringle, University Vermont this series now standsat M-8000, practically all the numbers 1-756.). Pringle singlehandedlychanged the names ofsoon- representing Mexicangrass collections, and afew designat- to-be-forgotten railroad waystations into botanical immor- ing the type collection for a new Mexicangrass, like Paspa- tality as the type localityfor this grass species or that and so lum guayanerum, an annual from Sinaloa and Nayarit. whether one is sure ofthe pronunciation or not he poursover COTECOCA(Comision Tecnico Consultiva paraIa Deter- maps looking for Tizpan, Tuxpan, Etzatlan, Urupan, Ira- minacion Regional de los Coeficientes de Agostadero) is a puato, and many others, some ghost towns, some not. On at growing federal organization with a group of professionals least one of his walks Pringle was shadowed by a curious of high technical capability, who have penetrated all the bear, but this hardly deterredhim from finding Stipa pringlei, states of Mexico and are single-handedlyraising the level of Muhienbergia pringiei, Bouteloua pringlei, Brachypodium practical and practicing range management. They have pringlei, and Peyritschia pringlei. taken the initiative in planning a 'Grasses of Mexico" totake G.B. Hinton, it is rumored,was a rich man.He hired collec- a form comparable to that of Hitchcock's Manual of the tors who scoured the hillsides for grasses; and their suc- Grassesof the United States. Since October of 1979 I have cesses, if not his, resulted in Paspalum hintoni, Aristida been priveleged to take a leading role in coordinating the hintoni, Hilaria hintoni, Muhienbergia hintoni, and Panicum gathering of information on the identification, ecology, and hintoni. Ynes Mexia, granddaughter of a Mexican general distribution of thegrasses of Mexico and thebook, no longer under President Santa Anna, would have scorned the a dream, is taking shape. thoughtof having someoneelse do her collecting, even after Recently Frank Gould, of A. & M. University, com- a Mexican fly laid eggs in her nose, eggs that later crawled pleted astudy of the grassesof Chiapasbased principally on back out as worms. the collections of Breedlove.He also published a monograph Pringle's dates of Mexican grass collections from 1885 of the mostly Mexican genus, Bouteloua, and has in many through 1909 effectively bridge the time between Fournier other ways contributed to our knowledge of Mexican (1886) and Hitchcock (1910 to 1936). My own collecting grasses. dates take upsoon thereafter. I first landed in Mexico in July The Mexican grass fever is flourishing today. Among the 1938off a Grace Line freighter reaching from San Francisco current Americans are R. McVaugh (the grasses of Nueva to Concepcion, Chile, with many stops between including Galicia), G. Davidse (Lasiacis), I. Wiggins (the grasses of Mazatlan and Acapulco in Mexico. Here, going ashore by Baja California), C. Reeder(Muhlenbergia), J. Reeder(dioe- long boat, I made collections, including a few grasses, cious grasses) and T. Soderstrom (the bamboos). for one of the Thomas Harper Goodspeedbotanical expedi- Among theactive Mexicansare J. Valdes (grasses of Coa- tions to the . huila), A. Cuevas (the grassesof Nueva Leon),A. Rojas (the After completing a Ph.D. (University of California, Berke- grassesof Veracruz),R. Guzman (the Maydeae), R. Martinez ley) and settling in frigid Laramie, Wyoming, I found the (the grassesof the ), D. Johnson (the grasses Mexican climate looked over the years ever more inviting, of Sonora), and E. Hernandez-X(the ethnology of Mexican even as the grasses became ever more interesting. In 1946 grasses). my first monograph of an essentially Mexican genus was The exploration of Mexico for grasses has undergone completed (cf. Beetle, 1943, the North American Variations three phases,the first European (the Fournier period), the of Distichils spicata). This was followed in 1948 by a mono- second based in the United States (the Hitchcock period), graph of the genusAegopogon, whose centerof diversifica- and now a third and current period based in Mexico upon a tion is Mexico. growing cadre of Mexican agrostologists. from to Mexico became ever more fre- Trips Wyoming EditorsNote: It would be great ifall old rangemen and womencould haveas quent. They included excursions with University of Wyo- much funin retirement as Professor Beetlewhilefurtheringthe art and science of range management.