273 

 IMPROVING HAWAIIAN PASTURES. 



Bv G. C. ^Il-xko. 

 (Continued from the August Forester. ) 



Chhris gayana: Rhodes Grass. Though of much later in- 

 troduction this grass I beUeve will prove as valuable as, or per- 

 haps even more valuable than Paspalum dilatatum, though in a 

 different way. Air. A. W. Carter, when agent for the Molokai 

 Ranch, found notice of it in an Australian publication, to which 

 country it had been sent from South Africa by the late Cecil 

 Rhodes Mr. Carter secured a small package of about two ounces 

 of seed in 1904 and it was sown in November of that year. From 

 that packet w^ere saved two gunnv sacks of seed, and a nice little 

 rick of hay was cut in ]\Iay. In T906, from the old roots, 10 bags 

 of seed were saved. Xow, in Alarch of 1907, there are about 

 30 acres of it to be cut tor hay. and the young grass is growing 

 thickly w^herever it seeded last year. It is as a hay grass that 

 this grass will be especially valuable, as it grows with great rapid- 

 ity and forms a dense stand up to 5 feet high when in seed. It 

 has the advantage of being green and in flower after the dry 

 season has set in and when the weather is favorable for curing 

 hay on the dry ranches. This was my experience of it in I9(\t 

 and 1906 on cultivated land, but whether on old land it would 

 keep as green remains to be proved. It is a great drought resistor 

 and though I have seen some large plants in their second year 

 killed by drought, yet on cultivated land it grew and flowered 

 right through the excessively dry season of 1906. This may, of 

 CQurse, be due to some extent to a system of dry farming, by a 

 number of chickens scratching for seecf and keeping the surfa e 

 loose, thus conserving the moisture below. 



The seed was first allowed to ripen and the seed heads reaped. 

 The paddock was then mowed for hay, and though not an ideal 

 way of hay-making yet the hay was relished and soon eaten by 

 the stock in the dry season. It has yet to be shown whether it 

 will furnish hav in quantity from old fields, at what time it should 

 be shut off for this purpose, and also what amount of grazing it 

 will stand in the pastures. I feel sure that with this grass some 

 of the dry ranches here could not only put up a reserve supply of 

 hay for the dry seasons and periods of drought for their stock, 



