BOTANICAL HISTORY AND NOMENCLATURE OF SORGHUM. 47 



In Africa there naturally has been but little done toward a study 

 of the numberless forms of sorghum. In Egypt the British agri- 

 cultural officials have studied quite carefully the native varieties, 

 and the writer is much indebted to them for various shipments of 

 seed and for provisional classifications, which are apparently very 

 accurate. Colonial officers in French West Africa a (Niger Valley 

 and Senegal) and in German East Africa" have published brief 

 notes on the leading varieties of their regions. Schumann (1895), 

 Busse and Pilger (1902). and Pilger (1901) have described botani- 

 cally a very large number of forms from German East Africa and 

 from Togo on the Guinea coast. Their descriptions are appar- 

 ently based on dried material, mostly heads. Without the cultiva- 

 tion and field study of varieties for at least two or three seasons, such 

 descriptions are of little value to the agronomist. 



In India a comprehensive effort to assort, classify, and describe 

 the manifold forms of that extensive region is now being made. 

 Hooker (1897) gives a synopsis of the varieties of India as outlined 

 by Hackel and also by Stapf. The Reporter on Economic Products 

 for India, Mr. I. H. Burkill, has been engaged for several years in 

 this work. A synopsis of a portion of his outline of classification 

 was published by Benson and Subba Rao (1906) with valuable addi- 

 tions of their own. For the varieties of the Madras Presidency, 

 occupying the southern portion of the peninsula, these last-named 

 gentlemen have made a provisional classification, which has the 

 decided merit of taking into account the agronomic characters of the 

 plants. 



In recent years the number of trinomials and other polynomials 

 applied to sorghum varieties has been increased to literally hun- 

 dreds. It is an open question whether any useful purpose is sub- 

 served by the wholesale application of Latin trinomials to the exotic 

 cultivated forms of a variable plant like sorghum, especially where 

 the study is limited to immature or fragmentary dried material. 

 Where a field study of the growing plants is also made, the final 

 number of varieties is always greatly reduced and the practice be- 

 comes less objectionable. 



A satisfactory classification of the varieties of sorghum or of any 

 other cultivated plant must take account of the habit and characters 

 of the entire plant, not merely of the panicles. The height, size, and 

 color of the stalks, the comparative length of the internodes and 

 sheaths, the number, size, and color of the leaves, the length, stout- 

 ness, and exsertion of the peduncle, and the number of branches and 

 suckers are all of vital importance in the study of varieties. Com- 

 parative earliness, disease resistance, drought resistance, and pro- 



a Dumas, 1905, and Lambrecht, 1903. 

 175 



