376 FIELD CROPS 



to a pale whitish or yellowish purple. The pods are in two 

 or three coils, brown when ripe, and contain several seeds. 

 The seeds are somewhat kidney shaped, though the coils of 

 the pod may compress them into other forms. They are 

 about the same size as red clover seeds, but are much less 

 variable in color, being quite uniformly of a bright olive 

 green shade. 



472. Varieties. The ordinary grower gives little atten- 

 tion to varieties of alfalfa, and few really distinct ones have 

 been developed. One which is prominent in Minnesota, 

 North Dakota, and other Northern states on account of its 

 hardiness is the Grimm alfalfa, introduced into Carver 

 County, Minnesota, by Wendelin Grimm, an early German 

 settler. Other strains of alfalfa have recently been intro- 

 duced which are quite similar to the Grimm in many respects. 

 The most noticeable difference in Grimm alfalfa from the 

 ordinary type, in addition to its extra hardiness, is the wide 

 variation in the color of the flowers, ranging from white 

 through yellow and greenish to the purple of the ordinary 

 strain. Other varieties are named largely from the locali- 

 ties from which they have been imported, including the 

 Turkestan, Peruvian, and Arabian. Large quantities of 

 seed of ordinary alfalfa have been sold as Turkestan, which 

 was claimed to be remarkably resistant to drouth and cold. 

 The true Turkestan alfalfa does possess these qualities to 

 some extent, but it is better than the common varieties only 

 in limited sections in the semiarid West. Both Peruvian 

 and Arabian alfalfa are marked by a long growing season 

 and a lack of hardiness; they are a success only in the South- 

 west, as in Arizona and southern California. 



473. Production in the United States. The area in 

 alfalfa, as reported by the Census of 1910, was 4,702,000 

 acres, the largest acreages being in Kansas, Colorado, 



