EXPERIMENTS WITH UDO. 7 



instead of in September, and is altogether a much smaller plant. 

 The root is said to be pleasant to the taste and was used as an ingre- 

 dient of homemade beers in colonial times. The writer has never 

 had an opportunity to blanch the shoots of the plant and test them. 

 The California species is considerably larger than the spikenard 

 and has leaves which are of a thicker, more leathery character than 

 either the udo or the spikenard. In Maryland a plant of this species 

 has lived through the mild winter of 1912-13, but it gives the im- 

 pression of being distinctly not hardy there. It has not yet flowered 

 and is not large enough to furnish shoots for comparison with the 

 Japanese species. As material for breeding, these American forms, 

 and possibly the wild sarsaparilla (A. nudicaulis L.), are promising, 

 and there is room here for an interesting piece of breeding work, 

 since it is the vegetative portion of the plant which is used and 

 asexual methods of propagation are a success. No crossing of these 

 species seems to have been attempted. 



VARIETIES OF UDO. 



When first introduced into America as a garden vegetable there 

 were supposed to be two varieties only, the Kan udo and the Moyashi 

 udo. Although grown side by side, there never appeared to be any 

 marked difference between these two kinds, and the writer is con- 

 vinced that they are identical varieties, Kan udo being seedling udo 

 and Moyashi udo simply forcing udo. Much the same distinction 

 exists between sea kale from seed and sea kale " crowns." 



Since this first introduction, the writer's attention was called by 

 Prof. Y. Kozai, director of the Imperial Agricultural Experiment 

 Station, Nishigahara, Tokyo, Japan, to the fact that in Japan what 

 are "really believed to be distinct strains do exist, and these have been 

 given distinctive names. Through the kindness of Prof. Kozai 

 these varieties were introduced and are now growing in America. 

 They are S. P. I. Nos. 33250, " Yozaemon, red, early " ; 33251, " Hanza, 

 late " ; 33252, " Fushiaka, node red, midseason " ; 33253. " Shiro, white, 

 very early " ; 33254, " Nakate, Usu-Aka, rosy, midseason " ; and 33255, 

 " Kan udo, red, extra early." The writer has grown these and forced 

 them once only, and they appear to be very similar in appearance, 

 but whereas seedling or Kan udo in this latitude is ready to cut in 

 April, the Hanza and Fushiaka varieties are at least three weeks or 

 a month later. The Yozaemon has produced its shoots at almost the 

 same time as the Kan udo. The two later starting strains will pro- 

 long the cutting season well into the middle of May in the latitude 

 of Washington, D. C., which will be a great advantage, and it is 

 probable that other characteristics will be discovered as experimenters 

 become familiar with these strains. 



