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[Bill Jones <billj AT harborside.com>]

I'm way behind, having entertained company all last weekend.

These grasses you mentioned sound interesting.  We're soon opening 
another square of pasture and "clearing" it (for me, that means thinning 
all the but the very largest conifers, and limbing these up, and leaving 
most deciduous trees, except chittem).  It's a little wetter down there, 
but presently almost no grass grows due to the shade, so it's a good 
place to try.  I think seed is probably available for these and the 
local big-leaf clover.  The thing is, it's not so much up to me, as it 
is to nature, to decide which grasses will grow best.  A grass has to 
not only compete with other grasses, but also withstand the summer 
drought.  My tall fescue that now dominates stays green all summer, 
while the "also-ran" cultivar next door at the neighbors' is totally 
brown.  I didn't even plant it; it sprouted/regrew after my buckwheat 
cover crop.  But good luck identifying those grasses; even among 
botanists it's considered a specialization requiring a hand lens, and 
often, observation at multiple stages of development.

I think you're not understanding why nature has created such a limited 
palette of specialized plants here.  Plants like acacia, comfrey, and 
nettle evolved in places where nature provides a respite from the shade 
of tall trees, due to aridity or cold, like the Great Plains, or the 
tundra's edge.  It's precisely analogous to the development of the 
mammals, which was retarded until the reigns of the dinosaurs, and then 
the giant birds, came to an end.  Likewise, our unbroken canopy of fir 
tends to discourage the growth, and more importantly the evolution, of 
smaller plants.

If you go to a typical academic site, like the OSU forage webpages, 
you'll see only traditional non-native forage crops listed, like 
ryegrass and clover.  That's probably because lots of people have 
experimented with these and had success.  The irony is that virtually 
every one of these has been declared a "non-native invasive" (not just 
"somewhere," which is true of virtually any vigorous plant, but 
specifically in Oregon).  Don't you find it odd that the plants that 
allow you to take control of a landscape and make it do your will, the 
ones traditionally used by farmers for that very purpose, and sold in 
every feed store, are now under attack? Check out this page from OSU; 
every single forage species on this page is clearly a "non-native 
invasive" in Oregon (that's why we plant them, in hopes that our clover 
will fill the world):

http://forages.oregonstate.edu/topics/description.cfm?TopID=608

This is already affecting my world.  Lotus uliginosus seed is no longer 
commonly available, and I would definitely plant some in our 
newly-seeded pasture if it were.  It's not available to me, that is, 
because it's one of the major hated plants of the radical enviros, but I 
notice the County planted a local park around a lake with it 
abundantly.  This harmless little legume now occupies the entire 
drainage ditch along US 101 for hundreds of miles.  I guess the reason 
there's no "native" adapted to that environment is simply that there 
were no drainage ditches along asphalt roads here in pre-Columbian times.

I went to the plant list in Bill Mollison's classic "Introduction to 
Permaculture" to count the "non-native invasives" earmarked for being 
banned.  I counted 52 entries, from Acacia to Urtica.  It made me think 
of the President's Iraqi Baath party card deck.  What's of note is that 
these plants are the most interesting ones, the ones that really give 
permaculture the potential to create something new, like perennials and 
nitrogen-fixers.  Most of the others are just ordinary fruit and nut 
trees.  So understand that research in permaculture basically comes to 
an end, on the part of people not affiliated with a university at least, 
anywhere the "natives only" lunacy takes hold.  I'm not willing to make 
that sacrifice for the flimsiest of fake reasons.

Bill

Lynda wrote:

> Part 2, pasture grasses, in answer to your imaged problems:
>
> Calamagrostis nutkaensis, Danthonias, Deschampsias, Hordeum brachyantherum, 
> leymus triticoides,
> Calamagrostis canadensis, Calamagrostis foliosa,  also maybe Trisetum 
> canescens, Trisetum cernuum, Trisetum spicatum, Leymus cinereus.
>
> Pleuropogon refractus, Rhynchospora alba would be interesting rare natives 
> to try out.as both are rhizomatous perennial grasses which seems to be your 
> interest in red clover.
>
>