CLOVERS AND OTHER LEGUMES 



247 



roots penetrate so deeply into the earth, alfalfa will be 

 found growing not alone on the irrigated land, but on 

 land on which no water is placed and where the rainfall 

 is even as low as eighteen inches a year. Indeed, it is in 

 regions of scant rainfall, that it produces its best seed, 

 though the hay crop is light. 



As we move northward, we find still the wonderful 

 fields of alfalfa. Colorado fields are far-famed, more 

 than one half of the area in hay in that state being in 

 alfalfa. A smaller amount of the crop will be found in 

 Wyoming, and even 

 less in Montana, for 

 alfalfa is naturally 

 adapted to a warm, 

 dry climate. 



In the northward 

 movement of our line 

 of young investigators, 

 none will encounter 

 more of this splendid 

 crop than those who 

 pass through Kansas 

 and Nebraska. Here whole valleys, as the Arkansas, the 

 Kaw, the Solomon, the Little Beaver and the Platte are 

 given over largely to the production of alfalfa hay and 

 seed. 



That part of our line eastward from the Missouri 

 River will fijid that in the Carolinas and Virgihia, in 

 Pennsylvania and New York, some alfalfa is grown and 

 successfully; that in Ohio, Indiana, Illinois and Iowa 

 the cultivation of this crop is rapidly increasing as its 

 needs become better known to the farmers; and that 

 even in Minnesota and the Dakotas, a hardy variety, 

 known as the Grimm alfalfa, is being extensively grown. 



Fig. 109.- 



Counesy Iowa Slate College. 

 ■ A red clover plant. 



