Native oral traditions and archaeological studies confirm that grass and wildflower seeds were a Pomo dietary staple for many thousands of years, although their importance has been overshadowed by the emphasis placed on another primary food source, acorns. This is largely because as early as the 1830s, invasive, non-native grasses had replaced the indigenous grasses and wildflowers throughout much of the state. Thus, by the beginning of widespread white settlement of Indigenous homelands, these seeds were scarcely available for Pomo people to eat. Today, when looking at the golden grasses carpeting California’s hills, people think they see an undisturbed natural ecosystem. However, the state’s native grasslands, which once covered at least 20 million acres, have almost entirely vanished. The plants now found in its meadows and hillsides are invasive European grasses that arrived with white settlers and their livestock.
These new species are usually annuals, while the older native species were perennial bunchgrasses. What is the difference? Annual grasses only live for one year. They develop from a seed, flower, disperse their seeds, and then wither and die. Perennial bunchgrasses, however, can live for over a century. Bunchgrasses send up vegetative shoots every year from a central crown. These also flower, develop and disperse their seeds. But while most of the vegetative stems then dry up, the plant itself stays alive.
The dry outer blades of bunchgrasses often bend over to form a sort of silvery skirt that provides the plant with its own mulch and shade and gives them their characteristic tufted look. The circles of space around each “bunch” provide room for other plants to grow. This helps explain why native grasslands supported about 40 percent of the state’s total native plant species. On the other hand, invasive annual grasses carpet an area, creating an impenetrable forest of grass stems that prevents other plants from establishing themselves. Thus, as California’s native perennial grasslands have vanished, so too have many of the plant and animal species that were at home in these grasslands.