AI,FAI,PA 



LENGTH OF LIFE 



Alfalfa is a perennial, and the length of time it 

 will continue to Ihrive, under favorable conditions, is 

 a matter of conjedlure. There are fields that are in 

 good condition after more than twenty-five years of 

 constant cropping. Others are reported to be so after 

 very much longer periods. It requires three, and 

 under unfavorable conditions even four, years for 

 alfalfa to reach its prime, and after seven to ten years 

 a decline may generally, yet by no means always, be 

 expedled, though if properly cared for there is no 

 good reason why this should be so. I,ike any other 

 crop, it demands proper treatment for best results, and 

 when this treatment is not given it suffers, and ceases 

 to yield as it would under better conditions. 



HABITS OP GROWTH 



Alfalfa is a deep and gross feeder. The root sys- 

 tem in its development is most interesting for its great 

 power of penetrating, under at all favorable conditions, 

 to the very bowels of the earth. The young plant 

 consists of a number of low branches springing from a 

 central simple basal stalk at the crown of the root. 

 These branches ascend diredlly above ground in a 

 clump. As the plants become older certain of the 

 more robust stems elongate just beneath the surface of 

 the ground and become new branch-producing stalks, 

 as seen in the frontispiece. In this way one stalk, or 

 rhizome, becomes two or many headed. The plant 

 represented in this plate grew in Colorado, in a rich 

 loose soil, with a heavy clay subsoil, and an abundant 

 supply of water, the water-level ranging from four to 

 eight feet from the surface at different seasons of the 



