446 GRASSES OF IOWA. 



becomes warm, about corn planting time, and it begins to 

 tiller or stool out at once. It grows to a height of twelve or 

 fourteen feet. As many as forty-three large leafy stalks 

 have been produced from one seed. At a distance a field of 

 Pen.cillaria looks like mammoth timothy. The heads are only 

 about an inch in diameter, but range from ten to sixteen 

 inches in length and are closely set with thousands of small 

 seeds. If allowed to grow until the llower heads begin to 

 develop, before cutting, it is claimed that it will yield the 

 heaviest crop of any fodder plant in cultivation. The best 

 way to handle the crop is to mow it when from three to six 

 feet in height. It will immediately start up again and can be 

 cut several times during the season. One farmer who made a 

 careful test says he sowed the seed on the fifteenth of May in 

 drills eighteen inches apart. In twelve days he cultivated the 

 crop once and it grew so rapidly after that time that it smoth- 

 ered out a"l the weeds. His first cut was made July first, 

 forty-five days after sowing the field. The crop was about 

 seven feet high and it weighed, green, thirty tons per acre, 

 and when dry gave six and one half tons of hay per acre. The 

 second growth was cut on August fourteenth, when the plants 

 were nine feeD high, and the crop weighed fifty-five tons per 

 acre gre n, and eight tons dry. The third cutting was not 

 made until October first. It weighed ten tons green, and one 

 and one-half ions dry, thus making a total crop of ninety-five 

 tons per acre of gre'en fodder and when dried sixteen tons of 

 hay." 



I have not seen this grass under cultivation in this state, 

 but it may be grown for the same purpose that teosint is and 

 will prove valuable for soiling purposes. It has proven a val- 

 uable forage plant in other sections of the United States, 

 especially in the south. 



