l^ • Agricultural Journal of Victoria. 



AUSTRALIAN SALTBUSHES IN CALIFORNIA. 



■ ■ It has been said witli justice that " a prophet hath no honor in his 

 own country/' and the same holds good of fodder plants also. The 

 value of our saltbushes as drought resisting fodder plants has long 

 been recognised in a hazy way^ but few, if any, practical attempts 

 have been made in their artificial cultivation, if we except the good 

 work accomplished at the Wagga Experimental Station in New South 

 Wales. The late Baron von Mueller when Government Botanist in 

 this State, never grew tired of testifying to the wonderful value of 

 certain of our indigenous saltbushes, and continually distributed small 

 quantities of seed for trial, but rarely was much trouble taken to 

 propagate them. 



While however, we have been backward in utilising nature's 

 special gifts to us, preferring rather a policy of inaction in allowing 

 them to be eaten out or smothered with useless weeds, others, in 

 America and elsewhere, have been struck by the unanimity of the 

 testimony to their good qualities from authorities well qualified to 

 express an opinion. 



In the annual report of the Agricultural Experimental Station of 

 the University of California, an account is given of the work at the 

 Southern Coast Kange Sub-station in the introduction and propaga- 

 tion of Australian and South American saltbushes. The first valuable 

 species obtained was the well-known Atriplex semibaccata. Mr. Chas. 

 H. Shinn, the writer of the report in question, states that : — " During 

 the season of 1897-1898, when the total rainfall was but a little more 

 than four inches, and all the other field crops failed, this plant grew 

 all summer, yielding at the rate of one-and-a-half tons of dry forage 

 or coarse hay per acre, and five hundred pounds of seed, also of high 

 feed value. This ^showing was so remarkable that it was difficult to 

 believe such results, but the experience of three subsequent seasons 

 confirmed them in every particular." 



" Saltbush seed was distributed throughout the entire district, to 

 every farmer who would agree to test it. More than two hundred 

 persons sowed seed, and in every case made a success of the crop. 

 Its value was greatest on the light and hardpan soils, as reports from 

 all parts of the county, particularly on the east side of the Salinas, 

 clearly showed. The area devoted to saltbush is steadily increasing. 

 The plant shows some ability to naturalise itself in pastures 

 and by roadsides, but the well-known "fox-tail" chokes it out, 

 as it also does the wild oats, clovers, and other native forage 

 plants. Saltbush, however, can hold its own with our native 

 weeds. In 1900, at the sub-station, saltbush under ordinary field 

 culture yielded at the rate of three-and-a-half tons of dry fodder per 

 acre. One special advantage of the crop for this district is that, if 



