51 
H. W. L. Lewis, secretary Louisiana State Grange, Tangipahoa Par- 
ish, La. (P. O., Osyka, Miss.): 
It is hardy and cultivated in small lots, doing best on rich, sandy loam, yielding 2 
to 3 tons per acre. I have experimented more than any one else in my section with 
forage plants, especially winter grains and grasses. Have used rye and barley for 
winter feed, but have given them up in favor of the Holcus lanatus; have had this in 
cultivation for thirty years. It is a perennial, but owing to its shallow roots it dies 
out during our long, dry summer and fall from 50 to 75 per cent. One lot kept the 
third year had less than 10 per cent. of the grass alive. Hence I have for twenty 
years or more used it as an annual, sowing it with turnips, collards, or by itself. A 
good way is to sow the seed broadcast and cover lightly in a late crop of turnips after 
the last cultivation. After the turnip crop is removed the first warm days in January 
or February will start the grass into rapid growth. It is cut frequently through the 
spring for green feed, and after oats are ready to cut is allowed to mature seed. 
Prof. D. L. Phares, in his ‘“‘Farmer’s Book of Grasses,” says: 
In the Eastern States this grass is called Salem grass and white Timothy; in the 
South, velvet lawn grass, and velvet mesquite grass; in England, woolly soft grass 
and Yorkshire white. It has been sent to me for name more frequently than any 
other grass. Having found its way to Texas, people going there from other States 
have sent back seeds to their friends, calling it Texas velvet mesquite grass, supposing 
it a native of that State. So far as has come to my knowledge nine-tenths of all so- 
called mesquite grass planted in the Southern States is this European velvet grass. 
It grows much larger in some of the Southern States than in the Eastern States or in 
England, and seems to have greatly improved by acclimation. 
Velvet grass may be readily propagated by sowing the seed or dividing the roots. 
It luxuriates in moist, peaty lands, but will grow on poor, sandy, or clay hill lands 
and produce remunerative crops where few others will make anything. The reason 
that cattle do not prefer it is not because of a deficiency in nutrition, but because of 
its combination. It is deficient simply in saline and bitter extractive matter which 
cattle relish in grasses. 
It is by no means the best of our grasses, but best on some lands. Other grasses 
are more profitable to me. It should be sown from August to October, 14 pounds equal 
to 2 bushels per acre. Northward it is perennial, in the South it is not strictly so, 
(Plate 54.) 
TRISETUM. 
Spikelets two to three, rarely five-flowered, in a dense or open pan- 
icie, the rachis usually hairy and produced into a bristle at the base of 
the upper flower; outer glumes unequal, acute, keeled, membranaceous, — 
with scarious margins; flowering glumes of similar texture, keeled, 
acute, the apex two-toothed, the teeth sometimes prolonged into bristle- 
iike points, the middle nerve furnished with an awn attached above the 
middle, which is usually twisted at the base and bent in the middle; 
palet hyaline, narrow, two-nerved, two-toothed. 
Trisetum palustre. 
A slender grass, usually about 2 feet high, growing in low meadows or 
moist ground throughout the eastern part of the United States. The 
eulins are smooth, with long internodes and few linear leaves, 2 to 4 
inches long; the panicle is oblong, 3 to 4 inches long, loose and grace- 
fully drooping, the branches two to five together, rather capillary, 1 to 
