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Dr. Charles Mohr, Mobile, Alabama : 
Lespedeza striata (Japan clover) is an annual plant, which, during the last twenty 
years, has spread all over the Gulf States. It blooms and ripens its seeds from the 
early summer months to the close of the season, and grows spontaneously in exposed, 
more or less damp, places of a somewhat close, loamy soil. No attempts at its cultiva- 
tion have been made. In the stronger soil of the lands in the interior this plant, 
protected from the browsing of cattle, grows from 1} to 2 feet in height, and yields 
large crops of sweet, nutritious hay, the same plot affording a cut in August and an- 
other in October, yielding, respectively, 14 tons and 1 ton of hay to the acre. The 
plant is perfectly hardy, and is not known to have been killed out by a long drought. 
It is easily subdued by cultivation, as it does not again make its appearance on land 
where it has been plowed in, and is not found among the weeds the farmer has to con- 
‘tend with in the cultivation of his crop. Itis a perfect pasture plant, easily estab- 
lished, and standing browsing and tramping by cattle well. Its propagation through 
the woods and pastures is effected by cattle, the seeds passing through the animals 
with their vitality unimpaired. Asa fertilizing plant it is greatly inferior to the - 
Mexican clover. 
J. B. Wade, Edgewood, De Kalb County, Ga.: 
It is said by the old residents here that Japan clover was unknown in this part of 
the country until “after the war.” It now grows spontaneously on most of the land ~ 
of middle Georgia that has a red-clay subsoil, and which has been turned out, i. e., 
not plowed or cultivated for twoor three years. It grows sufficiently high to make 
hay, but as it springs up in February, or even earlier should there come a warm spell 
of weather, it is mostly used for grazing, as it lasts from February to November. 
J. B. Darthit, Denver, S. C.: 
It does not stand drought as well as Bermuda; both are our best pasture plants. 
For cattle we have nothing better than Japan clover; ut it salivates horses and 
mules after the Ist of July, especially if very Inxuriant. 
J. W. Walker, of Franklin, N. C., in a letter to the Blade Farm, says: 
Seventeen years ago Japan clover was found liere, occupying an area not exceeding 
10 feet square. It now covers thousands of acres, upon which all kinds of stock keep 
fat and sieek, while the yield in milk and beef produets has increased a hundred-fold. 
Our exhausted and turned-out lands that have hitherto yielded nothing but that 
worse than useless broom sedge (Andropogon scoparius), now have in its stead a 
beautiful carpet of most nutritious verdure. 
This plant grows anywhere and on any kind of Jand, rich or poor, wet or dry, high 
orlow. It has been found in luxuriant growth on the summit of the Blue Ridge, at 
a height of 4,000 feet, It will catch and grow luxuriantly where none of the clovers 
proper will grow at all. Unlike them it never runs out. 
J.B. MeGehee gives the following experiences in a letter to the 
Southern Live Stock Journal, September, 1886: 
This has proved the worst season for its propagation that Ihave met with. Ihave 
this week examined over 200 acres of my last spring’s sowing, where I sowed one- 
half bushel per acre, and I find the most spotted stand I ever saw ; and of the whole | 
200 acres I will get a crop of hay on not to exceed 50 acres. My first sowing of about 
80 acres was commenced about March 22, and finished about the 1st of April. This 
was coming up thickly when the freeze of the 9th of April came, and I am convinced 
that all seeds then sprouting were frozen out and killed. The sowings during April 
did better, but anything like a reasonable stand is found only on moist places. The 
reason for this is the fact that not a drop of rain fell from April 26 to June 6. My 
worst catch was on comparatively clean land, an oat field, in which the oats bad 
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