274 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



on rich land a vast yield of mammoth and a small show of timothy, but 

 in 1905 you will have a magnificent development of timothy and probably 

 about one-half or one-third as much mammoth clover. 



Mammoth clover is more nearly a biennial than the common red. If" 

 you sow mammoth clover and timothy in 1903 and pasture off your mam- 

 moth clover in 1904 up to or about the 10th of June in the latitude of 

 southern Iowa and northern Missouri, extending clear through Illinois and 

 Indiana and one hundred miles west of the river into Nebraska you can 

 usually take a fine crop of seed ranging from two to five bushels per acre. 

 After that you will find very little mammoth clover. All that will remain 

 the next year will be the seeds which for some reason did not come up 

 in 1903 but came up in 1904, and by the time the timothy will have taken 

 such a hold on the land that these will not grow too large or coarse to 

 make good hay. 



The common red clover if sown in the spring of 1903 with a nurse 

 crop, will come in bloom that fall, provided the stand is good and the sea- 

 son favorable, and will always under these circumstances give fine fall 

 pasture. In a season like 1902, it will give from one to two tons )of a 

 hay crop and frequently about a half a seed crop , if allowed to stand for 

 seed. This, however, we do not advise, as the maturing of the seed will 

 thin the stand. It should, therefore, either be pastured or cut for hay. 

 The next year it will produce a crop of hay in June and, if the season be 

 favorable, a crop of seed in the fall. The bulk of the crop will be clover 

 the first year, but if allowed to stand a year later will be two-thirds tim- 

 othy and one-third clover, that third year clover being for the most part 

 from seed which did not grow the first year. 



However, we are inclined to believe that in our common red clover 

 seed there are two or three varieties which can be distinguished by the 

 color of the blossoms, some being a deep red, or scarlet, others being 

 paler, about the color of the mammoth, with an occasional pure white one. 

 Our seed breeders will in the course of time separate these varieties and 

 give us at least three distinct varieties of red clover. We are inclined 

 to believe that one of these at least is a short perennial. If the common 

 red clover is kept from going to seed it becomes a short perennial and 

 will continue three or four years, whereas the mammoth clover is more 

 nearly a biennial. 



It should be stated, however, that with both varieties of clover, a seed 

 crop depends en insect fertilization; hence there are some seasons in 

 which there will be an almost total failure. We have never been able to 

 get a good crop of seed of mammoth clover in any year when there was an 

 abundance of white clover and alsiks in bloom in the neighborhood in the 

 first half of July, the reason, we believe, being that the Italian bees and 

 their grades do not visit the mammoth clover and hence do not fertilize it. 

 We have known seasons of this kind when in our mammoth clover we 

 would not find a honey bee in a rod square when it was in full bloom, the 

 only fertilizing agency being the bumblebees. If the winter has been such 

 as to insure a large crop of bumblebees, then you can get a crop no matter- 



