Our Plant Immigrants 



199 



Appearance of the same Salt Lands two years after planting of Berseem 



the tropical yam that are almost unex- 

 plored, so far as their possibilities as 

 food for the white man are concerned, 

 and whose excellent qualities and re- 

 markable yields put them in the same 

 rank with the potato. 



THE CURIOUS PROPERTIES OP THE 

 FENUGREEK 



The great fruit-growers of the Pa- 

 cific slope, with their thousands of 

 acres of clean-tilled orchards, have been 

 searching for a cover crop that would 

 increase the fertility of their lands and 

 add the necessary humus or vegetable 

 matter to it. We have found this for 

 them in the shape of a leguminous plant' 

 that inhabits the Mediterranean re- 

 gion — the fenugreek. The seeds of 

 this plant, curiously enough, are eaten 

 by the Jewish women of Tunis in order 

 to make them fat, and no young Jew 

 in that region would think of marrying 

 a girl until the use of this grain had in- 

 creased her weight to the fashionable 

 figure of 250 or 300 pounds. The seeds 

 form a part of the expensive condition 

 powders that stockmen use to prepare 

 their stock for the fat-stock shows, and 

 it was for this purpose that our explor- 

 ers introduced it in the first place. 



For the great Northwest, where fruit 

 trees are killed every winter and none 

 but the hardiest kinds will grow, the 

 explorers have brought in from Russia 

 the hardy Vladimir cherry and forms of 

 the Siberian crab-apple, with the hope 

 of at least starting some types of fruit 

 that will be hardy there. 



The "cane brakes" of the Southern 

 States are thickets of an American 

 bamboo whose stems are so brittle that 

 they are worthless in the arts. Ship- 

 ments of the Japanese timber bamboo, 

 from which the thousand and one beau- 

 tiful Japanese things are made, have 

 been imported and are being tried in 

 those areas to see if they will not grow 

 there and occupy land that today is the 

 ranging ground of wild hogs and half- 

 wild cattle. 



A DROUTH RESISTANT NUT 



Thousands of acres of almond or- 

 chards in California have been unprofit- 

 able because the rainfall is too light in 

 the regions where the orchards have 

 been started ; and to get a more drouth- 

 resistant nut plant for these areas the 

 pistache from the Levant has been 

 brought in, and there are now being set 

 out at various places in California small 



