338 



Missouri Agricultural Report. 



the dealers who eater to this demand. The trade has employed various 

 means to meet the demand for low-priced seed. Large importations are 

 made of the same kinds of seed which are produced in and are exported 

 from this country. The imported seed can be sold cheaper than that 

 which is exported. Grades of seed which are practically unsalable in 

 Europe find a ready market here because the better American-grown 

 seed is commonly considered too high-priced. Various forms of seed 

 adulteration have long been practiced, and seed ill adapted to our cli- 

 matic conditions has often been sold. The results have been frequent 

 failure of crops, an excessive cost of the actually good seed, and a wider 

 distribution of many kinds of foreign weeds than by any other means. A 

 general understanding of these conditions as they relate to particular 

 kinds of seeds is helpful in making tests. 



APPLICATION TO KINDS OF SEEDS. 



Bed Clover and Alfalfa. — Seed of both red clover and alfalfa is im- 

 ported, chiefly from Europe, in large quantities annually, and much of it 



is low in quality. Such low- 

 f-''-^'%. grade seed is usually very 



weedy. The imported red 

 clover seed is often a grade 

 of small-seeded screenings 

 which carries a class of weed 

 seeds rarely found in a large- 

 seeded grade of clover seed. 

 Such low-grade seed carries 

 seed of clover dodder in 

 nearly every instance, while 

 American-grown clover seed 

 practically never carries this 

 kind of dodder seed. (See 

 fig. 1.) Shriveled alfalfa 

 seed screenings containing 

 very little, if any, good seed 

 are sometimes imported. Such material can serve only as an adulterant. 

 Cheap imported alfalfa seed usually carries clover dodder, while Ameri- 

 can seed is free from it. (See fig. 2.) Again, buckhorn, wild carrot and 

 wild chicory seeds are nearly always found in the cheap alfalfa seed from 

 Europe, while they do not appear in most lots of American seed. Both 

 red clover seed and alfalfa seed are subject to adulteration with yellow 

 trefoil seed. (See figs. 3 and 4.) Alfalfa seed, furthermore, is adulter- 

 ated with sweet clover seed (fig. 5) and with seed of the bur clovers. 



Fig. 3. — Mixture of seeds of red clover (a) 

 and yellow trefoil (b). The clover seeds 

 are more or less triangular, those of tre- 

 foil oval, and usually with a distinct pro- 

 jection beside the scar notch. (Enlarged.) 



