48 FARM GRASSES OF THE UNITED STATES 



There are only about four States of the Union that 

 have as much as 50 per cent, of their area improved. 

 Whatever may be said of the advisability of keeping 

 good arable land in pastures, a great deal of this unim- 

 proved land could be made into fairly produdlive pas- 

 ture. In the blue-grass country this can be done by 

 clearing ofE the rubbish, burning the leaves and litter, 

 and scattering seed of such grasses as blue-grass, white 

 clover, orchard-grass, and redtop. On rough hill land 

 on the farm belonging to the Missouri Experiment 

 Station, which, during the writer's schoolboy days, was 

 covered by a dense growth of blackjack and postoak 

 timber, there are now fine blue-grass pastures made 

 in this manner. The productiveness of such pastures 

 can be continued by keeping them free from brush and 

 weeds. 



WEEDS IN MEADOWS AND PASTURES 



Weeds may be divided into three classes — namely, 

 annuals, or biennials, which die root and branch when 

 they have made seed; ordinary perennials, which die 

 down to the ground in the fall, but the roots of which 

 remain alive for several or manj' years; and perennials 

 with creeping, or underground, stems, whose aerial 

 stems die at the approach of winter, but whose under- 

 ground stems live over. 



The way to eradicate an annual or biennial weed is 

 to prevent it from making seed. The seeds of some of 

 them may live for many jears in the soU and send up 

 a new crop of weeds annually. If they be cut back 

 persistently, so that no new seed is formed, they can 

 finally be eradicated. The hardest weeds of this class 

 to handle are those which, when cut back, produce seed 



