Our Plant Immigrants 



189 



is now assembled in the green-houses 

 of the department the largest and best 

 selected collection of mangoes in the 

 world. These are being fruited in 

 Florida, and the best will be propa- 

 gated as rapidly as possible for distri- 

 bution. 



SPANISH HARD-SHELLED ALMONDS 



The Sierras of southeastern Spain pro- 

 duce most of the long, slender kernelled 

 almonds which have come so rapidly 

 into favor for salted almonds. Califor- 

 nia could produce them, as she already 

 grows the poorer kinds, the soft-shelled, 

 coarser-flavored sorts. To get these 

 finer kinds, the famous Jordan especially, 

 the writer explored the almond or- 

 chards of Malaga and Andalusia, and 

 cut scions or grafting wood from the 

 best trees. Much of this material has 

 been used in California with success, 

 but the Jordan flowers too early, and 

 another expedition must be made in 

 search of later flowering kinds from the 

 same region to make the hard-shelled 

 type a success, or else new regions 

 must be found in this country where 

 the Jordan will not be caught by the late 

 spring frosts. 



BERSEEM, THE EGYPTIAN CLOVER 



The greatest annual irrigated forage 

 crop for culture in regions with mild 

 winters is the berseem of the Nile Val- 

 ley. It is the crop that the Egyptian 

 fellah, or peasant, has depended upon 

 for centuries as a soil-improver and as 

 a plant on which to pasture his cattle 

 and other animals of the farm. Planted 

 in the late autumn, it grows so rapidly 

 that before the next June it will yield 

 four cuttings of a most nutritious fod- 

 der that may be pastured upon, fed 

 green, or made into hay. No other 

 plant known should be so well suited to 

 grow in those newly opened up, irri- 

 gated regions of Arizona and California 

 whenever the settlers learn to grow 

 high-priced annual crops instead of al- 

 falfa, which is the main plant industry 

 in that region now. Berseem will not 



come into competition with alfalfa, for 

 it is an annual, while alfalfa is a peren- 

 nial, and therefore not suited to grow in 

 rotation with crops like cotton, melons, 

 or other annuals. The trials so far 

 made with berseem are encouraging, 

 and the plant has seeded at various 

 places in California and acre plots of it 

 have been grown. 



THE DATE-PALM INDUSTRY 



The transfer from the great deserts 

 of the old world to those of the new of 

 the unique date industry is an accom- 

 plishment of which the government 

 may well be proud. It is something 

 that private enterprise would not have 

 undertaken for decades to come, and 

 the name of Mr Walter T. Swingle will 

 be always associated with this new in- 

 dustry. Though the attention of the 

 public was first attracted to the possi- 

 bilities of growing the foreign date 

 palm in this country through chance 

 seedlings that bore fruit, and through 

 an early introduction of the pomologist 

 of the department, it was the explora- 

 tion trip of Mr Swingle to the Desert 

 of Sahara in 1899 that first proved the 

 feasibility of starting commercial date 

 plantations in Arizona and California. 

 From the time when the first large ship- 

 ment of palm suckers reached the 

 Southwest until the present, the Office 

 of Plant Introduction has had an ex- 

 plorer in some one or other of the great 

 date regions of the old world gathering 

 plants for the government plantations. 

 Today the list of introduced varieties 

 numbers over 170, and more than 3,000 

 palms, large and small, have been im- 

 ported and planted out. The best sorts 

 from Egyptian oases, selected kinds 

 from the valley of the Tigris, the fa- 

 mous dates of southern Tunis, and 

 even the varieties from uncivilized Bel- 

 uchistan, have been gathered into what 

 can proudly be called the best collec- 

 tion of date varieties in the world. 

 This search through the deserts of the 

 world has revealed the fact that the 

 dates of our markets are only one or 



