THE SUISTFLOWEB AS A SILAGE CROP. 5 



England States, northern New York, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Min- 

 nesota, in North Dakota, Montana, Washington, and Oregon, and 

 also in some of the high valleys of the Eocky Mountain region, such 

 as the San Luis Valley of Colorado. 



Sunflowers have been found much more resistant to frost than corn. 

 An observer in Michigan claims that they will " push back the frost 

 line three weeks " in that State. A correspondent in New York 

 writes that his sunflowers were green in the fall two weeks after corn 

 had been killed by frost. These observations explain why sunflowers 

 succeed in the high altitudes of Colorado and other Western States 

 where frosts often occur during the growing season. , 



Fig. 1. — A field in Ellis County, Kans., overrun by wild sunflowers during the wet season 



of 1915. 



VALUE OF SUNFLOWERS IN THE SEMIARID REGIONS. 



On account of the fact that sunflowers grow wild in western Kan- 

 sas (fig. 1), Nebraska, South Dakota, and North Dakota, as well as 

 in eastern Montana, Wyoming, and Colorado, it was anticipated that 

 they would be important as a silage crop in dry regions. This has 

 not proved to be the case. The yields at drj^-land stations south of 

 the Dakotas have not been large enough to warrant their production 

 under cultivation. Field tests show that the sorghums give much 

 higher yields under such conditions. 



At the Fort Hays Experiment Station, Hays, Kans,, sunflowers 

 were grown first in 1913. This was an unusually dry year and the 

 plants made a very poor showing. None of them grew over a foot 

 and a half high, and the yield was small. The better varieties of 

 sorghum under the same conditions made a yield of 2 to 2^ tons of 



