BUREAU OF PLANT INDUSTRY. 149 



The growing of the Durungo variety of cotton, which has been 

 shown to be adapted to wide variations in natural conditions, has been 

 further extended in different parts of the cotton belt. Approximately 

 30,000 acres of Durango cotton are being grown in 1916 in the Impe- 

 rial Valley of California, where this variety has proved to be more 

 drought resistant and better adapted to irrigation culture than other 

 long-staple Upland varieties. At the other extreme of the cotton 

 belt, in the vicinity of. Deep Creek and Holland, Va., about 1,600 

 acres of Durango are being grown. This variety is also meeting 

 with favor in other communities in South Carolina, Alabama, north- 

 ern Oklahoma, and also in the dry climate of western Texas. 



The Acala variety of cotton, recently acclimated from Mexico by 

 this bureau, shows some points of superiority over the more common 

 varieties in northern Texas and in Oklahoma and promises to be 

 rapidly extended into general cultivation in those regions. It is 

 distinctly earlier than Kowden, Lone Star, and Triumph, now the 

 most popular varieties, and its lint is longer and of higher quality, 

 being unusually strong. Its earliness makes Acala specially attrac- 

 tive on the bottom lands, where cotton tends to grow rank and be late 

 in reaching maturity, and on the northern high lands, where the frost 

 shortens the growing season. 



The new system called single-stalk culture has contributed to 

 the establishment of the Egyptian cotton industry in the Salt River 

 valley of Arizona. As applied to the Egyptian cotton, the new sys- 

 tem not only induces earlier fruiting and tends to insure larger crops, 

 but greatly facilitates the picking of the cotton at the end of the 

 season. Thus the cost of production is lessened, while the yields are 

 increased. 



The single-stalk system of controlling the branching habits of the 

 cotton plants has made possible a special method of culture for irri- 

 gated districts. The rows are planted in pairs, one on each side of a 

 large furrow. Irrigation is confined to the furrows, and these are 

 separated by broader ridges that remain as a permanent mulch of dry 

 soil. The water is applied more effectively, germination and growth 

 of the } r oung plants are more uniform, and less labor is required for 

 cultivation and the control of weeds. The plants soon shade the furrow, 

 but the broader space above the ridges is kept open through the sea- 

 son, with the vegetative branches suppressed by the single-stalk sys- 

 tem. If the plants grow very large they lean away from the furrow 

 over the dry ground. This makes it possible for irrigation to be 

 continued later, in the season without interrupting the harvest or 

 damaging the ripe bolls, so that larger crops of good fiber can be 

 matured. 



Foreign plant introductions. — The plantings of the oriental 

 timber bamboo in northern Florida and Louisiana have grown to a 

 height of 25 feet, and there is no longer any question about their 

 producing in this country good canes comparable to those which they 

 produce in China and Japan. A quick method of their propagation 

 has been worked out, so that it will now be possible to supply large 

 enough quantities of the young plants to set out many small areas 

 throughout the South, from the Carolinas to California, wherever 

 there is sufficient moisture and the land is not too high priced to 



