14 FARMER'S BOOK OF GRASSES 



ic food; along period of growth, which causes it to appropriate 

 the greatest amount of both kinds of food and store them up in 

 root and stem. In wheat, on the other hand, we have a surface 

 rooted plant, a scanty leafage, and a short period of growth. 

 What wonder, then, that so coarse a feeder as clover should thrive, 

 even where so dainty a plant as wheat should utterly fail, as is so 

 often the case? But, as will be remembered, all this atmospher- 

 ic and mineral food, which has been assimilated and stored up 

 in the roots and stems of clover remains to furnish an abundant 

 supply, by its decay, to the crop which shall succeed it, and thus 

 clover or similar plants have always played a most important 

 part in all systems of rotation, as in the wheat growing region of 

 the Genesee valley of New York. In this Desmodium we have 

 a plant which appears to be a substitute for clover and to possess 

 this great advantage, viz : that it will flourish vigorsusly upon 

 certain lands upon which a crop of clover can not be secured. 

 This seems to be especially true of the sand barrens of the At- 

 lantic seaboard. Certainly if the statements made concerning it 

 are to be credited, it is destined to effect a revolution in agricul- 

 ture throughout this section, and to restore to fertility lands 

 which have been partially abandoned by the former." Dept. 

 Ag., Report for 1878, pp., 182, 183. 



Mr. Collier's reasoning is just. But the Desmodiums are so 

 light and so diffuse in growth that I think the quantity per 

 acre would be small. In soils mentioned they would act as de- 

 scribed, but the plant food they could bring from the subsoil 

 and store from the atmosphere would be comparatively little. 

 On the same kinds of soil, I opine, the Lespedeza striata would 

 grow well and obtain and store plant food in the ways mention- 

 ed by Mr. Collier, and in larger quantity than the Desmodi- 

 ums could. The Lespedeza possesses other properties which 

 would give it preference on the soils and for the purposes con- 

 templated. The growth is so dense as to completely blanket 

 the earth for the hot months, protecting from washing and by the 

 dense shade preventing evaporation of fertilizers and promoting 

 absorption from the atmosphere. A great objection to the Des- 

 modium too is the fact that the hispid jointed pods adhere to the 

 cosfts of animals and people. 



RICHARDSONIA SCABRA. Mexican Clover. 



This is a native of Mexico and South America. It has be- 

 come naturalized in Florida and the southern parts of other 

 southern States. It is called Mexican Clover, Spanish Clover, 

 Florida Clover, water pursley, bellfountain, poor Joe, pigeon- 

 weed etc. The analysis of this plant, made in 1874 by Mr. Me- 



