CULTIVATED GRAINS AND GRASSES 25 1 



plant grows freely in the marshes and along the borders of our 

 northern lakes, where it constitutes the feeding grounds of our 

 wild geese in summer time. It is tall and vigorous, bearing a 

 heavy crop of large starchy seeds. These seeds were much 

 prized by the Indians, who gathered them in great quantities 

 for food, which fact would undoubtedly have led in due time 

 to its systematic cultivation. 



Sorghum (Andropogon sorghum). This genus, Andropogon, with 

 its many and diverse species, is a great puzzle to botanists, run- 

 ning as it does by almost imperceptible gradations into the 

 genus Panicum, with its eight hundred and fifty or more species 

 scattered well over the world. 



The cultivated sorghums are of two widely different sorts, the 

 commercial sugar-bearing sorghum, closely related to the sugar 

 cane (Saccharum officinarum) and used mostly as a forage 

 plant ; and the nonsaccharine, to which belong broom corn 1 and 

 the various grain crops cultivated under the names Kafir corn, 

 durra (doura, dhourra, or dhoura), Milo maize, or Jerusalem corn. 

 Botanists quite frequently designate the saccharine sorghums as 

 Sorghum saccharatum and the nonsaccharine as Sorghum vul- 

 gare, all of which illustrates their difficulties in attempting to 

 make a classification to fit the facts. The sorghums are of recent 

 introduction as cultivated plants. They are not found among the 

 remains of the lake dwellers or of the Egyptians. The name 

 is absent from Chinese literature until recent times. The Greeks 

 and Romans were unacquainted with the species, which are not 

 mentioned in the Old Testament. 



The origin of the sorghums is not clearly established. By 

 many writers they have been credited to Asia, but the absence 

 from Sanskrit of any word to designate sorghum is held by 

 Candolle to argue against the assumption. When we add to this 

 the fact that nonsaccharine sorghums abound in equatorial Africa 



1 It ought to be generally known that the great broom-corn districts of the 

 world are in eastern Kansas and in the region about Areola and Tuscola, 



Illinois. 



