TOR THE SOUTHERN STATES. 
It is tender, very sweet, 
It makes also 
very rapid. 
and stock eat it greedily. 
a good hay. 
quantity of leaves. On loose soil some 
of it may be pulled out by animals graz- | 
ing it. I have seen it bloom as early as 
November when the season had favored 
it, and no grazing or cutting were per- 
mitted. Oftener it makes little start 
before January. But whether late or 
early starting, it may be grazed or 
mowed frequently, until April, it still 
will mature seed. It has become natu- 
ralized in limited portions of Texas, 
It produces an immense | 
87 
Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and 
perhaps other States. Itisavery pretty 
grass in all its stages; and especially so 
when the culms, two or three feet high, 
are gracefully bending the weight of the 
diffuse panicle with its many pedicelled 
flattened spikelets, each an inch or more 
long and with twelve to sixteen flowers. 
I would not, however, advise sowing 
this grass on poor land with the expec- 
tation of getting a remunerative return. 
It tillers abundantly under favorable 
conditions. 
JAPAN CLOVER. 
(Lespedeza Striata.) 
There is now so much enquiry about 
this plant, so much confusion, lack of 
knowledge and confounding with or 
mistaking for it another worthless na- 
tive srecies, and also the same errors 
in regard to a small genuine clover, 
that it is deemed proper to give some 
correct information on the subject. 
HISTORY. 
To botanists this plant has been 
known for many generations in its 
native habitat in China and other 
eastern parts of Asia. Finding its 
way to Japan it encountered congenial 
climute and soil, and rapidly spread 
over the entire country occupying all 
waste places, which it has continued 
to possess and improve for much more 
than a century. Here as on the con- 
tinent, it was of dwarfish habit and 
received a name indicative of the fact. 
Finally a few seeds, arriving in the 
United States, germinated, contested, 
a few feet of soil with other native and 
exotic plants that had long pre-occu- 
pied the iand. 
It gained streagth and increased in 
yield of seed till becoming somewhat. 
abundant, it commenced its westward 
invasion, simultaneously extending its | 
conquests northward and southward, 
firmly holding all conquered territory. 
Since 1870 its strides westward have 
been immense. It now extends from 
the Atlantic seaboard across the Mis- 
sissipbi, and its out-posis are pushed 
far towards the 
Texas. 
Denuded, soil-less hill tops, sandy 
plains, gravelly slopes, bottoms and 
banks of washes and gullies, pine 
thickets, open woods, fields, dry and 
damp soils, all seem as if specially 
created forits home. It seizes upon all 
with equal facility. 
it maintains its dwarfish habit on 
sands, gravels and other spots too poor 
to produce any other vegetation, densely 
covering the surface with its green robe 
and affording delighted live stock with 
delicious nutritious grazing for four to 
eight months of the year. But on richer 
soil it doffs the dwarf and dons the tree 
style justifying the American name of 
“bush clover,”’ sending its long tap root 
deep down in the subsoil and its stem 
two to three feet uj into the light and 
air, with its many branches thickly set 
with leaves, invitine tooth and blade. 
It attains here on rich or medium soil 
protected from live stock a magnitude 
that could not have been imagined by 
one secing it in itsfareastern home. It 
takes possession not only of unoccupied 
land and pine thickets but grows among 
sedges, grusses, briers and weeds, com- 
pletely eradicating many. species of 
noxious grasses and weeds. It subdues 
even broom grass and holds equal con- 
test with Bermuda grass; in some loeal- 
ities one yielding, in other localities the 
other succumbing, while in other spots 
western border of 
