(Mo* ) 



THE GRASSES, 



AND OTHER 



FORAGE PLANTS OF ALABAMA, 



. INDIGENEOUS, NATURALIZED, AND CULTIVATED. 

 BY " 

 CHARLES MOHR, MOBILE, ALABAMA. 



The great grazing capabilities of the richer lands in the inte- 

 rior of this State, are fully established and appreciated. A less 

 favorable opinion in that respect prevails regarding its Southern 

 portion, where stock raising, and the methodic manufacture of the 

 products of the dairy have been deemed not successful. In the light 

 of the experiences of late years, such ideas are rapidly disappear- 

 ing, and the attention of the farmer in the lower region is now 

 earnestly directed to this fundamental basis of his enduring pros- 

 perity. If we miss here the meadow in the strict sense of the 

 word, which forms such a striking feature in the system of agri- 

 culture, carried od in Northern latitudes, the South has in its 

 spontaneous grasses, and in several cultivated species from the 

 warmer regions of the Old World, resources of the same kind, 

 in no respect inferior. Considering that many of these plants 

 arrive at their maturity at a much earlier part of the season, 

 making room for successive crops, that others continue to vege- 

 tate for several months longer, under the influences of a pro- 

 longed warm season, permitting of repeated cuttings, while some 

 grow during a great part of the winter months, the production 

 of fat and flesh producing materials, in the shape of green forage, 

 hay, and in the pasture, must, by equal care and attention, reach 

 here, larger proportions than in higher latitudes, where, for 

 nearly one half the year, this work, in the great laboratory of 

 nature, in consequence of earlier and later frosts, is stopped. 



All doubts about these capabilities, even of the sub-tropical 

 belt, and the lighter sandy soils throughout the pine region, will 

 be dispelled by the sight of the rich verdure of a Bermuda grass 

 pasture, or the waving fields of crab grass covering the ground 

 after the removal of the corn, or earlier root crops, producing 



