CULTIVATED GRAINS AND GRASSES 251 
plant grows freely in the marshes and along the borders of our 
northern lakes, where it constitutes the feeding grounds of our 
wild geese in summer time. It is tall and vigorous, bearing a 
heavy crop of large starchy seeds. These seeds were much 
prized by the Indians, who gathered them in great quantities 
for food, which fact would undoubtedly have led in due time 
to its systematic cultivation. 
Sorghum (Andropogon sorghum). This genus, Andropogon, with 
its many and diverse species, is a great puzzle to botanists, run- 
ning as it does by almost imperceptible gradations into the 
genus Panicum, with its eight hundred and fifty or more species 
scattered well over the world. 
The cultivated sorghums are of two widely different sorts, the 
commercial sugar-bearing sorghum, closely related to the sugar 
cane (Saccharum offictnarum) and used mostly as a forage 
plant ; and the nonsaccharine, to which belong broom corn tand 
the various grain crops cultivated under the names Kafir corn, 
durra (doura, dhourra, or dhoura), Milo maize, or Jerusalem corn. 
Botanists quite frequently designate the saccharine sorghums as 
Sorghum saccharatum and the nonsaccharine as Sorghum val- 
gare, all of which illustrates their difficulties in attempting to 
make a classification to fit the facts. The sorghums are of recent 
introduction as cultivated plants. They are not found among the 
remains of the lake dwellers or of the Egyptians. The name 
is absent from Chinese literature until recent times. The Greeks 
and Romans were unacquainted with the species, which are not 
mentioned in the Old Testament. 
The origin of the sorghums is not clearly established. By 
many writers they have been credited to Asia, but the absence 
from Sanskrit of any word to designate sorghum is held by 
Candolle to argue against the assumption. When we add to this 
the fact that nonsaccharine sorghums abound in equatorial Africa 
1 It ought to be generally known that the great broom-corn districts of the 
world are in eastern Kansas and in the region about Arcola and Tuscola, 
Illinois. 
