116 THE GRASSES OF TENNESSEE. 



of nutritious hay, and is a profitable crop, considered with 

 reference to the seed alone. But beyond all these, it acts as 

 a vigorous ameliorator of the soil, increasing more than any 

 other forage plant the amount of available nitrogen, and so 

 becomes an important agent in keeping up the productive 

 rapacity of the soil, increasing the yield of other crops, and 

 adding to the wealth, refinement and culture of the farmer 

 who sows it. 



SOILS ADAPTED TO ITS GROWTH. 



Red Clover is a biennial plant, and under judicious till- 

 age may be made a perennial, and is specially adapted to 

 argillaceous soils, but it will grow well upon sandy soils, 

 when a " catch" is secured, by the application of a top- 

 dressing of gypsum or barn-yard manure. I have seen it 

 growing with vigor upon the feldspathic soils of Johnson 

 county, upon the sandstone soils of the Cumberland moun- 

 tain, and upon the sandy loams of West Tennessee, but it 

 finds a more congenial soil in the clayey lands of the valley 

 of East Tennessee, on the red soils of the Highland Rim, 

 and on the limestone loams of the Central Basin. But the 

 deep, black, porous soils of this division are not suited for 

 clover. Such soils become very dry in summer, and opens 

 in great cracks or fissures. The clover grows well enough, 

 but is apt to be killed by the dry, hot weather of summer. 



The clayey lands of West Tennessee have no superior for 

 the production of clover. It often grows upon these lands 

 from four to five feet in height, and forms a mat when it 

 falls, of great density and thickness. As much as four tons 

 of clover hay have been taken from a single acre. There 

 is also a soil derived from the Dyestone or Clinton forma- 

 tion in East Tennessee that grows clover with surprising 

 luxuriance. On such soils in McMinn* county, I have seen 

 the ordinary Red Clover six and a half feet in height. 

 Probably three-fourths of the lands in Tennessee will grow 

 clover remuneratively, and of the soils which will not, a 

 large portion is included in the old gullied fields that con- 



