CLASSIFICATION OF AMERICAN WHEAT VARIETIES. 



63 



Distribution. — Grown sparingly in Arizona, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Utah, 

 and Wyoming. 



Synonym-. — White Touse. This name is used by some growers in Utah, 

 Idaho, and Wyoming. 



DEFIANCE. 



Description. — Plant spring habit, midseason, tall ; stem white, weak to mid- 

 strong ; spike awnless, fusiform, middense, erect to inclined ; glumes glabrous, 

 white, midlong, narrow ; shoulders narrow, oblique to square ; beaks wide, 

 obtuse, somewhat incurved, 1.0 mm. long ; apical awns wanting to few, 3 to 12 

 mm. long; kernels white, midlong, soft, 

 ovate ; germ usually small ; crease wide, 

 middeep; cheeks usually angular; brush 

 midsized, midlong. 



Defiance wheat is variable in many of the 

 characters above described, indicating that 

 there are several different strains within the 

 variety. Spikes and kernels of this wheat 

 are shown in Plate X, B. 



History. — Defiance is the result of a cross 

 of White Hamburg as the male parent and 

 Golden Drop as the female parent, which 

 was made by Cyrus G. Pringle, in the Cham- 

 plain Valley, near Charlotte, Vt., in 1871. 

 It was first distributed in 1878 by B. C. 

 Bliss & Sons, as Pringle's Defiance. It 

 showed three distinct types of grain. Prof. 

 A. E. Blount took some of this wheat to the 

 Colorado Agricultural Experiment Station, where he grew it during a number 

 of years and made careful selections. Three commercial varieties were devel- 

 oped from it, viz, Early Defiance, Colorado No. 50, and Regenerated Defiance. 

 Prof. A. H. Danielson, who succeeded Professor Blount at the Colorado station, 

 has recorded the following interesting history of the origin of Defiance wheat : 



Before closing I want to give a little resume 1 of the history of Colorado's most 

 famous wheat. The mother of Defiance traces back to southern England and 

 was originated by F. F. Hallett, of Brighton, in the sixties. He is the man 

 who first used the word pedigree as applied to wheat. The mother was a de- 

 cided club-shaped type with pretty red grain, somewhat soft, and Hallett called 

 it the Golden Drop. It was quite popular in England, but never amounted to 

 much either in this country or Australia. From England it went to Canada, 

 where a man named Pringle got it as the Canada Club. The father of Defiance 

 was a Dutchman from Germany, and rather soft at that, but white. It came 

 from Hamburg, from whence lots of wheat emigrated in those days. It had a 

 long, coarse broad liead, a big white berry, and a rank-growing constitution with 

 pood ability to stand on its feet. Good old White Hamburg has long since been 

 dead and buried to cultivation, at least under that name, but was largely 

 grown on the Pacific slope during the early days of cereal culture there (76"). 



Distribution. — Grown from spring sowing mostly on irrigated land in Colo- 

 rado. Idaho, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming, and from 

 fall sowing in western Oregon and southern Arizona and California. The dis- 

 tribution of Defiance and Regenerated Defiance wheat is shown in Figure 20. 



Synonym. — Pringle's Defiance. As indicated above, this was the name under 

 which the variety was first distributed by a seed company. In recent years the 

 name Defiance has been generally used. 



Fig. 20.— Outline map of the western 

 United States, showing the distri- 

 bution of Defiance and Regenerated 

 Defiance wheat in 1919. Estimated 

 area, 194,400 acres. 



