CHAPTER 12 

 DESCRIPTION OF IMPORTANT GRASS FORAGE PLANTS 



There have appeared a number of important books on the subject of 

 forage plants, and as these books are readily available to the student of 

 agronomy, no attempt will be made in the following pages to give an 

 exhaustive treatment of the forage grasses. The object will be to give a 

 few of the essential details for the benefit of the student, who does not 

 expect to study the forage plants exhaustively, but yet desires to have an 

 acquaintance with the more important kinds. 



Timothy. Herd's Grass (Phhum pratense). This grass was intro- 

 duced by Timothy Hansom of Maryland from England in 1720, hence 

 the common name. It had an earlier introduction into cultivation by 

 John Herd, who found it growing wild in New Hampshire, as early as 

 1700. 



Description. The plant is perennial with short rootstocks and, there- 

 fore, it has a somewhat tufted growth. The smooth stems are from two to 

 five feet tall and in dry soil the base of the stem may be slightly bulbous. 

 The leaves are rolled inward at first from one side and then are later ex- 

 panded with s^hort blades. The inflorescence is a close spike of spikelets 

 (Fig. 54). The spikelets are one-flowered. Each flower is subtended by 

 a hyaline, toothed, awriless lemma and a narrow hyaline palet. The 

 subtending glumes of the spikelet are truncate with short awns and cov- 

 ered with stiff hairs. The caryopsis is ovoid from ^5 to ^2 i ncn m 

 diameter, usually inclosed in the lemma and palet at maturity. There 

 are about 600,000 to 2,000,000 seeds to the pound, the weight varying 

 with the size of the seeds. The standard of germination is 90 per cent, 

 and the purity of the seed should be not less than 98 per cent. 



Soils. Timothy is superior to any other grass for hay and it is well 

 adapted for growth on cold, moist, or wet lands, particularly with heavy 

 clay soils, although it succeeds best on moist loams and clays. It is not 

 grown successfully on some soils, or in shallow soils with a rocky bed 

 underneath. This grass shows innumerable unrecognized varieties only 

 three or four of which are of agricultural importance. Although the 



