180 Kansas State Board of Agriculture. 



ALFALFA VARIETIES, BREEDING, SEED, AND 

 INOCULATION. 



By H. F. ROBERTS, 

 Professor of Botany, Kansas State Agricultural College. 



SPECIES. 



The group Mecfacago, called botanically a genus, contains about sixty 

 different species. Very few of these have any agricultural value. 



Medticago arborea, the Cytisus of the ancient Greeks, is a good-sized 

 woody shrub, growing in the Mediterranean region, and much valued 

 there as a feed for browsing animals. It is not hardy in the northern 

 United States, is slow growing and woody, and therefore inferior to 

 alfalfa. However, the fact that it grows in a region of little rainfall 

 may make it useful in crossing to produce more drouth-resistant alfalfas. 



Medicago falcata, or Sickle alfalfa, is distributed widely over eastern 

 Europe and Asia, from the western Siberian border east into Chinese ter- 

 ritory, a distance of about 4000 miles, but occurs especially abundantly in 

 the southern portion of the eastern half of Siberia, in the provinces of 

 Tomsk and Irkutsk. Here the character of the country resembles that of 

 the northwestern prairie region of the United States. In this part of 

 Siberia the Sickle alfalfa is one of the characteristic and dominant wild 

 plants of the open range, and is cut by the peasants for wild hay. 



According to Hansen, the plants of Sickle alfalfa, growing wild 

 in Siberia, grow from three to three and one-half feet in height, and he 

 mentions the fact of finding plants on the banks of the Irtisk river, in 

 western Siberia, the stems of which were five feet eight inches in length. 

 None of the Sickle alfalfas received from Hansen, and in cultivation 

 at the Kansas station, reach the height of ordinary alfalfa. 



Hansen says further regarding the distribution of this plant:* 



"It extends throughout a large part of western Europe, central and 

 southern Russia, the Crimea, the Caucasus, and through approximately 

 the western two-thirds of Siberia, at least as far as 64 north latitude, 

 through north China, the Trans-Caspian regions, including Turkestan and 

 Persia, and through Afghanistan, western India, and Asia Minor." 



At the Russian Experiment Station of Besentsug, situated about thirty 

 miles east of Samara, in the eastern part of Russia proper a typical 

 semiarid high-plains region the Sickle alfalfa grows wild, is perfectly 

 hardy and drouth-resistant, and endures pasturing for ten years. The 

 (general information gathered by Hansen would indicate that Sickle al- 

 falfa is a desirable plant for pasture lands in western Kansas and for 

 breeding drouth-resistant and hardy alfalfas. The plants of Sickle al- 

 falfa at the Kansas station are, for the most part, low and spreading, 

 although some of them have a more upright habit. All Sickle alfalfa 

 plants have finer foliage than cultivated alfalfa, and all have yellow 

 flowers and more or less sickle-shaped pods, whence the name of Sickle 

 alfalfa. 



* Bull. 141, South Dakota Ex. Sta., p. 140. 



