244 THE FORAGE AND FIBER CROPS IN AMERICA 



The Delaware Station 1 obtained seed from several sources 

 ranging in latitude from Texas to Virginia, and compared the 

 growth with plants from seed grown at their own station for 

 several years. They found no evidence, where the identity of a 

 variety was beyond question, as the Whippoorwill, that seed 

 grown in the far south required any longer season for maturing 

 a crop than that grown some hundreds of miles farther north. 

 They note, however, that there is some evidence that seed of 

 any variety grown in their own state will produce better yields 

 than that grown farther south. The Cornell Station z grew seed 

 obtained from North Carolina, Arkansas, and Louisiana. The 

 black and clay varieties from North Carolina matured seed well, 

 but plants of the same varieties from Louisiana stock were too 

 late. While the Michigan Station 3 matured Whippoorwill seed, 

 and while certain varieties fruited at the Wisconsin Station, 4 

 the latter station, after experimenting four years with this 

 crop, reports that the cowpeas ripen so unevenly, and the plants 

 are of such a spreading character that their culture cannot be 

 found profitable except, possibly, for soil renovation by plowing 

 them under in the fall. 



301. Classification. The Louisiana Station 5 concludes from 

 a thorough study of 63 varieties that there is but one species of 

 all of the varieties of the true "cowpea," and that the number of 

 varieties can be greatly reduced, probably to five, possibly to 

 three. The solid colors, black, white, and red, are regarded as 

 pure varieties and the others as fluctuating hybrids of these 

 three. As in kidney beans, the characters of the seeds form 

 the best basis of classification, although the character of the 

 pods, the habit of growth and time of maturity may enter into 



1 Delaware Sta. Bui. No. 46 (1900), pp. 21-3. 



2 New York Cornell Sta. Bui. No. 61 (1893), p. 335. 



3 See New York Cornell Sta. Bui. No. 61 (1893), p. 335. 

 * Wisconsin Sta. Rpt. (1903), p. 276. 



:> Louisiana Sta. Bui., 2d ser. No. 40 (1896), pp. 1441-2. 



