AND OTHER FORAGE PLANTS. 31 



2. C. ESCULENTUS, the chufa from Europe is much like the 

 preceding in flavor, not quite so sugary, tubers more flattened 

 and elongated. Both are very nutritious, the latter more pro- 

 lific, yielding a large amount of excellent food, especially for 

 pigs and poultry. It is propagated from the tubers, planted 

 singly in a loose soil ten or fifteen inches apart in rows two feet 

 apart. Both kinds are planted alike. The Chufa produces its 

 tubers just under the surface of the ground and they are easily 

 found by pigs and poultry. These animals having free access to 

 them will exterminate them in a single season. The grass nut 

 burrows a little deeper and is not so easy to destroy ; yet it is not 

 troublesome. 



3. C. PHYMATODES and 4. C. ROTUNBTJS, (variety Hydra) 

 Nut-grass, Coco-grass are fearful pests, very difficult to eradicate 

 and causing many a fine farm and garden to be abandoned. 

 Hogs are fond of the bitter, rank-odored tubers and by rooting 

 for them damage lands seriously. The under ground stems and 

 fibrous roots are literally woven together in such a dense, strong 

 fabric as to render plowing tough work and hoeing very uncom- 

 fortable. The plants improve tenaceous clay lands^and prevent 

 washing. I would advise, however, to suffer not one to grow any 

 where. They multiply with astonishing rapidity. On clay lands 

 infested by them good corn crops may be made and still better 

 cotton crops. It requires more hard work than on other lands. 

 But after one good plowing and careful hoeing of the crop, they 

 give very little further trouble for the season. In most other 

 crops they are utterly intolerable. 



Like quack grass, these plants grow through Irish potatoes; 

 and not unfrequently tubers are fonnd within potatoes. If an 

 eye happens to stop within a potato, it seems to develop a tuber 

 there as readily as any where else. 



Many experiments and attempts have been made to destroy 

 these Cocos. If the place occupied be small, shaving daily the 

 surface of the ground so as to remove the preceding twenty-four 

 hours 7 growth of leaf will in course of time exhaust the tubers 

 and thus destroy the plants. For they can make no new tubers 

 if prevented from leaf-making. On larger spaces, by obtaining 

 early in spring a dense growth of vines of our common field pea, 

 I have so far destroyed it as to have little trouble with it for 

 two or three succeeding years. 



I have tried other experiments with it, such as watering it 

 with crude carbolic acid of full strength, without any apparent 

 injury to the plant. 'The most satisfactory results I have had 

 were obtained by sowing, on ground as thickly set with it as 

 possible, red clover seed. When a full stand was not obtained 

 at once on any part I reseeded till it was covered. In two or 

 three years not a sprig of coco could be found; while all the time 

 I was having fine clover crops, worth more probably than any 



