18 BULLETIN 430^ U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



Descriptive key to varieties of spring wheat. 



Heads rather slender, beardless or beards less than 3 inches long; 

 spikelets far apart, scarcely overlapping, 



wide when seen in face view Common wheat. 



Heads beardless : 



Chaff white, glabrous 1. Fife. 



Chaff white, pubescent 2. Bluestem. 



Heads bearded : 



Chaff white, glabrous 3. Preston. 



Heads rather stout, all bearded, beards 4 to 8 inches long; spike- 

 lets close together, much overlapping, narrow 



when seen in face view Durum wheat. 



Chaff yellowish: 



Chaff glabrous — 



Beards yellow 1. Kubanka. 



Beards black 2. Pelissier. 



Chaff pubescent — 



Beards black 3. Velvet Don. 



Chaff black: 



Chaff slightly pubescent — 



Beards black 4. Kahla. 



VARIETAL EXPERIMENTS. 



The varietal experiments with spring wheat are reported here in 

 two separate series. The first contains the varieties grown in the 

 regular varietal test. The second contains some lots obtained from 

 the Minnesota experiment station in the spring of 1913, too late for 

 mclusion in the regular series. All except one were discarded at the 

 end of 1915. They were not grown in any of the three years on plats 

 comparable in size with those of the regidar series. The annual and 

 average yields of the 33 varieties and strains of spring wheat grown 

 in the regular varietal test in 1913, 1914, and 1915 are shown in 

 Table X. 



In 1913 the varieties of spring wheat included in Table X were sown 

 on April 25 and 26 in tenth-acre plats on land that was broken in Octo- 

 ber, 1912. It lay in the rough until the spring of 1913, when it was 

 double disked and harrowed before seeding. Good stands were ob- 

 tained of practically all varieties. The spring was rather cold and 

 late. Precipitation during the growing season was below normal, as 

 is shown in Table II. A hailstorm on June 19 damaged the varieties 

 slightly. The yields in 1913 ranged from 1.3 bushels from Crossbred 

 (C. I. No. 3695) to 9.4 bushels from Erivan (C. I. No. 2397). The 

 average yield of the 14 durum varieties was 7.7 bushels, while that 

 of the 18 common spring varieties was 6.3 bushels per acre. The best 

 variety of durum wheat yielded 8.8 bushels, 1.4 bushels less than the 

 best common wheat. 



