14 BULLETIN 981, U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 
by the Office of Forage-Crop Investigations were found in September, 
1912, in a field of Sumac sorgo on the farm of Mrs. Flynn, near Chilli- 
cothe, Tex. This field was badly infested with Johnson grass, and a 
number of plants were discovered which showed evidences of hybrid 
origin. Seed was gathered from these plants, and two of them were 
dug up and transplanted at the field station. One of these plants 
had elementary rootstocks, and the other, though it lacked any well- 
developed rootstocks, had a panicle that clearly showed a relationship 
with Johnson grass. 
Fig. 10.—Root of a hybrid betw een Sumac sorgo and Johnson grass, F. C. I. No. 5848, showing the devel. 
opment of rhizomes. 
Neither of the plants which had been reset at the field station lived 
over winter, but the seed from these and other hybrid plants was sown 
at the Chillicothe Field Station and at the Arlington Experimental 
Farm, Va., in the spring of 1913. In the resulting crop there were 
at least four distinct forms. Some had well-developed rootstocks 
(fig. 10), while others, even though they resembled Johnson grass more 
closely in stem and leaf characters, had no rootstocks at all. There 
was also a wide variation in the juiciness and sweetness of the stems, 
one form being quite as juicy and sweet as Sumac sorgo, while other 
forms had pithy stems. 
€ 
