25 



ft It produces many culms from each stool, many broad green leaves, 

 and abundance of seed, and will reseed the ground each year. Land 

 once seeded with it would produce a crop of fair hay after a crop of 

 wheat has been taken off, provided the wheat stubble be turned under 

 and the land irrigated. It is generally associated with Panicum 

 crus-galli and P. colonum. 



(< No grass, however good it may be, is grown for hay or pasture 

 in this section, since Alfalfa supplies these demands ; so it is not 

 customary to cut this one for hay except when it appears as a weed in 

 the Alfalfa fields. But the occasional lack of water would seem to be 

 the only good reason why a crop of 'hay might not be cut from the 

 fields that lie idle during the latter half of the season. Quite a good 

 deal of it is cut by the Mexicans, and fed green to stock while waiting 

 for corn to mature. 



" The grass is a native of this south-western arid section, being 

 reported from Kansas, Colorado, Texas, and New Mexico, notably 

 from the creek bottoms of this territory. The nutritive ratio of 1 to 

 9*3 is narrower than in the case of Timothy hay of the eastern States, 

 and so far as can be judged from the analysis, it should be a valuable 

 forage plant." (Some New Mexiceu^Forage Plants, Bulletin No. 18, 

 March, 1896, p. 64.) 



Habitit and range. Found on every kind of soil and widely spread 

 as E. annulata, being common in the tropics of both the New and Old 

 World and New Guinea. It occurs in all the colonies except Tasmania. 



2. Eriochloa annulata, Kunth. 



Botanical name. Annulata, Latin annulus, a ring ; in allusion to 

 the annular callus or ring-like base of the spikelet. 



Synonyms. See E. punctata. 



Vernacular name. Early Spring grass (Bailey). 



Where figured. Agric. Gaz. See E. punctata. 



Botanical description (B. FL, vii, 463). A smaller and more slender 

 grass than E. punctata, the leaves usually narrower, glabrous. 



Spikes slender, 1 to 1 inches long, the main axis of the infloresence as well as the 

 rhachis usually glabrous, the pedicels sometimes bearing a few short hairs. 



Spikelets narrow, tapering at the end, scarcely 1 lines long, including the point, 

 which is rather longer than in E. punctata. 



Empty glumes much less hairy than in that species, three or rarely five nerved. 



Flowering glume the same. 



Variety acrotricha, spikelets rather longer, with long points and 

 rather more hairy, and the hairs of the pedicels more numerous, with 

 a few sometimes also on the rhachis (B.Fl.) Found from the coast 

 and table-land to the interior. 



Value as a fodder. This is a valuable grass, one of the best, and, 

 as already pointed out, closely related to E. punctata. In any case 

 the remarks on these two grasses may, from the point of view of the 

 farmer and pastoralist, be considered to be interchangeable. Mr. 

 Seccombe has experimented on the grasses, side by side on the Kich- 

 mond River, and following is his statement : ( ' It is said that this grass 



