CAUSE OF SUCKERS 



449 



HENRY COUNTY 1907. 



MONTGOMERY COUNTY 1907. 



CAUSES OF SUCKERS. — How Detected. Corn generally sends 

 up but one stalk or culm. Occasionally one or more in addition may 

 appear, branching from the lower nodes, near or below the surface of 

 the ground. These are termed suckers. They may have no root system 

 whatever, drawing their nourishment entirely from the mother stalk. 

 Again, they are found with a few roots leading off from near the place 

 where the sucker is attached to the mother plant. A sucker may or 

 may not produce an ear. It seldom does. However, a tassel is gen- 

 erally present. The presence of suckers may be attributed chiefly to 

 two causes. 



Thin Planting. Suckering is not so common on light soil. On 

 such land, thin planting is desirable. Considerable suckering is fre- 

 quently found where thin planting has been done on rich, heavy land. 

 This is due to the amount of available plant food being greater than 

 that needed to nourish the single stalk produced from the planted 

 seeds. The plant thus in its endeavor to utilize this abundance of 

 plant food, sends forth these additional stalks or suckers. Suckering 

 is greater in seasons most favorable to the growth of the corn. On 

 rich, heavy soils it is better to plant four kernels to the hill, which 

 produce stalks bearing ears, than to plant from two to three kernels 

 and have in addition a large number of suckers which take consider- 

 able nourishment from the soil and return no grain. The following 

 table will illustrate this point : 

 RESULT OF THIRTY-NINE EXPERIMENTS IN TWELVE COUNTIES IN IOWA 



Kernels or &talks per hill . . , 

 Per cent suckers 



1.0 

 55.0 



1.5 

 30.6 



2.0 

 19.7 



2.5 

 14.3 



3.0 

 8.9 



3.5 

 6.7 



4.0 



5.7 



4.5 

 4.9 



5.0 

 4.0 



