232 



CHICORY ROOT 



CLOVER 



production of 21,495,870 pounds of chicory root 

 in the United States in 1899. Of this, 19,876970 

 pounds were raised in Michigan. 



Importance as an industry. 



The fact that this commodity is imported into 

 America has led to the establishment of the indus- 

 try here, although the market for the product has 

 never permitted an extensive development. Mich- 

 igan, Nebraska, Illinois and Wisconsin have been 

 most active in its prosecution. The industry 

 naturally centers around a factory for preparing 



iiif nil 



Fig. 332. Various types of chicoiy roots. 



the roots, as the raw product is too bulky to 

 permit of long shipments. The business, of man- 

 ufacturing chicory roots into a finished product 

 has been a somewhat uncertain one, owing to 

 the ease with which the market is glutted by 

 a large crop in this country or in Europe. The 

 farmer usually raises chicory on contract with a 

 manufacturer, the former agreeing to plant a stip- 

 ulated number of acres and to deliver the roots 

 to the factory, the latter guaranteeing to pay a 

 certain price per ton for all roots delivered. 

 Unless such a contract can be made, it would be 

 unwise under ordinary circumstances, for a fanner 

 to plant chicory. 



Profits from culture. 



The price paid for chicory roots ranges from 

 six to eight dollars per ton. Six to ten tons per 

 acre may be expected under ordinary conditions. 

 The cost of raising an acre of chicory will vary 

 from thirty to forty dollars. 



Literature. 



Bulletin No. 19 of the Division of Botany, of the 

 United States Department of Agriculture, is a 

 monograph on the subject. Bulletin No. 49 of the 

 Nebraska Experiment Station contains directions 

 for the culture of chicory. The Cyclopedia of 

 American Horticulture contains an article on chic- 

 ory as a medicinal and salad-making plant. [See 

 also article on chicory in Fanners' Cyclopedia, 

 Orange Judd Co., New York city.] 



CLOVER. Figs. 333-343. 



The word clover is popularly used to designate 

 herbaceous forage plants of several genera of the 

 family Leguminosae, but by botanists it is re- 

 stricted to species of the genus Trifolium. In this 

 article, the clovers are considered to be Trifo- 

 liums. The Florida clover will be found under the 

 article Beggarweed, the Japan clover under Les- 

 pedeza, the bur and hop clovers under Medicago, 

 the Sweet, Bokhara or tree clover under Melilotus. 

 Related plants are alfalfa, serradella, sulla, sain- 

 foin, vetch, lupine. 



The genus Trifolium comprises probably two hun- 

 dred or more species and marked natural varieties, 

 most frequent in the temperate parts of the north- 

 ern hemisphere, but occuring also on mountains in 

 tropical countries, and to some extent in South 

 Africa. They are annual, biennial or perennial, 

 usually with compound leaves of three leailets 

 (whence the name trifolium), but in some species 

 of five or seven leaflets, and papilionaceous (pear 

 like) small flowers usually in dense heads ; stamens 

 ten, nine of them united by their filaments ; fruit 

 a very small and usually indehiscent pod contain- 

 ing few nearly spherical seeds. The flowers are 

 white or in shades of red, red-purple or yellow. 

 Several of the clovers are sometimes grown for 

 ornament [see Cyclopedia of American Horticul- 

 ture], but the great value of the plants lies in their 

 usefulness for green-manuring [see Vol. I, page 

 504] and for forage [see, also, Forage, Meadows and 

 Pastures, in this volume]. The important agricul- 

 tural clovers are Trifolium pratense, T. hybridum, 

 T. repens, T. incamatum and T. Akxandrinum; sev- 

 eral other species are more or less weedy plants 

 along roadsides and in waste places. The impor- 

 tant forage clovers and also most of the weedy 

 kinds are native of the Old World. 



The ability to grow clover successfully and 

 uniformly is one of the marks of a good farmer in 

 the northern states and Canada. Clover of some 

 kind is almost a necessary part of self-sustaining 

 rotations in these regions. In the very short rota- 

 tions in which clover occurs, the land is likely 

 to refuse to produce clover after a few courses. 

 In that case, other crops may be substituted for 

 a time, it is not known just why clover will not 

 grow in certain cases. In Europe much is said 

 about "clover sickness," but it is doubtful whether 

 the same cause or condition is present in this 

 country, at least to any great extent. Experi- 

 ments at Rothamsted, as reported in 1901, "seem 

 to exclude the supposition that the primary cause 

 of failure ('clover sickness') is either destruction 

 by parasitic plants or insects, injury from excreted 

 matter, or shade of a corn crop, and to indicate 

 that it must be looked tqp in exhaustion of some 

 kind within the range of the roots." It has been 

 asserted by others that lack of available potash in 

 the subsoil is the cause. Giissow, reporting to the 

 Royal Agricultural Society of England in 1903, 

 considers the fungus Sclerotinia eiborioides to be the 

 real cause of clover sickness. The refusal of lands 

 in America to produce clover is probably due to 

 various causes. It is frequently attributed to soil 



