2 



color of the seed. Variations from any chosen type are constantly 

 appearing, and as one or another of these sports or forms gains suffi- 

 cient local reputation a new name is applied and sooner or later the 

 supposed new variety is placed upon the market. In this way one 

 variety of cowpea may be cultivated in a dozen different locaHties 

 under as many names, or a dozen different peas may bear the same 

 name. The whole subject of the nomenclature of varieties is in a 

 chaotic state and can be straightened out only after years of careful 

 study have been given to it by botanists and the experimental agri- 

 culturists. No vahd conclusions can be drawn from the brief study 

 of a subject so complex. Cowpeas pass through every gradation of 

 form, from a short, stocky, upright bush having single stems a foot 

 high with very short lateral branches to those with trailing runners 

 growing as flat upon the ground as sweet-potato and melon vines, the 

 prostrate stems 15 or 20 feet in length. The pods vary from 4 to 16 

 inches in length, and the peas are of every imaginable shade through 

 white, yellow, green, pink, gray, brown, red, purple, and black, of 

 sohd colors or variously mottled and speckled, and of varying sizes 

 and forms from large kidney-shaped to httle round ones smaller than 

 the garden pea. There is a hke variation in the length of time the 

 different forms require to ripen seed, some requiring eight or nine 

 months, a few ripening in sixty days from the time of planting. 



There seems to be a somewhat constant relation between the time 

 required for attaining maturity and the habit of growth. The bush 

 varieties ripen in a shorter season than the trailers, but a bush variety 

 taken from the North will, in the course of a few seasons, assume the 

 trailing habit and lengthen out its period of growth in any of the 

 Southern States. Also, a runner or creeper requiring six to eight 

 months for reaching maturity in Louisiana will, if planted each year 

 a hundred miles farther north, gradually accommodate itself to the 

 shorter season and at the same time shorten its runners, approaching 

 more and more to the upright or "bush" habit of growth. There 

 can be no hard and fast line of separation between bush peas, trailers, 

 and runners. The best varietal character is probably the color of 

 the seed. It is quite probable that more than one species is in culti- 

 vation. The ' ' red "and ' ' black " varieties are closely allied ; the round 

 "lady" peas form a separate group; the large "black-eyed" and 

 "purple-eyed" are typical of another, and the variously mottled and 

 speckled "whip-poor-wills" are only a degree removed from the 

 solid-colored j^ellow, pink, and light-brown ones, and together would 

 naturally be taken to constitute one species or variety. The black 

 peas pass through various shades of red before maturity. The red 

 varieties sometimes carry their change of color in ripening so far that 

 they can not be distinguished from the black. The "black-eyed" 

 and "purple-eyed" are of the same ground color, differing only in 



