16 BULLETIN 981, U. S. DEPARTMENT OE AGRICULTURE. 



sown at Arlington on June 3.1913, and the F 2 proved to be quite vigor- 

 ous, about 90 inches tall, and almost as coarse as its sorgo ancestor. 

 The panicles, however, were intermediate in character, and a few 

 plants in the row developed rudimentary rootstocks. Trials of the 

 progeny of this cross were continued, and several promising selections 

 were made. One of these selections growing in a row at Biloxi, Miss., 

 in 1917 was cut twice, first on July 17 and the second time on Octo- 

 ber 2. Each time the plants were about 7 feet tall. 



Other artificial crosses between sorghum and Johnson grass have 

 been made, but their history is very similar to that of F. C. I. No. 

 6573 and will not be given here. 



Selections from the different sorghum-Johnson grass hybrids have 

 been grown each year in the tests at Chillicothe, Tex., and at other 

 points, but nothing superior to Sudan grass has been obtained. Some 

 of the selections resemble Sudan grass very much, however, (see figs. 

 4 and 11), and if this valuable grass sorghum had not been discovered 

 previously a fairly good substitute for it could have been developed 

 in this way. 



DISTRIBUTION AND IMPORTANCE OF SUDAN GRASS IN AFRICA. 



Sudan grass is being cultivated sparingly under the name "garawi" 

 along the Nile in lower Egypt, mostly on military hay farms. It 

 has not, however, gained any great popularity there such as it has 

 attained in the United States. That this grass originated farther 

 south in Africa is now fairly well established. Botanical specimens of 

 it are on file from upper Egypt; also from Senegambia, a British 

 possession on the west coast of Africa, and from a point near the 

 northern end of Lake Nyasa in northern Rhodesia. Besides these 

 more or less authentic specimens, a plant very similar to Sudan grass 

 has been collected in the Katagum district of northern Nigeria. 



The fact that Sudan grass is found only under cultivation in lower 

 Egypt and that it is known to be growing spontaneously along the 

 upper Nile and in the Sudan farther west indicates that the grass must 

 be native in that region of comparatively low rainfall just south of 

 the Sahara Desert. (See the map, fig. 3.) It is more difficult to 

 understand just how the grass came to be found south of the equator 

 on the shore of Lake Nyasa. British colonial troops may have carried 

 the seed with them in hay shipments from Egypt to their more south- 

 ern possessions, or it may have been carried south by natives from the 

 headwaters of the Nile along the chain of interior lakes which form an 

 almost continuous waterway from Lake Albert Nyanza on the north 

 to Lake Nyasa on the south. These, however, are only speculations. 

 We are sure that Sudan grass is found growing wild in a part of Africa 



