DRY-FARMING CONGRESS, WICHITA, 1914 



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to 1910 was entirely unknown both to botanists and to agronomists, some 

 details regarding the events which led up to its discovery may be of 

 interest. In 1885 Hackel, a noted German botanist, published a very exten- 

 sive paper on the classification of the sorghums. His knowledge of these 

 plants was based almost entirely upon dried and preserved material. In 

 other words, he knew very little of the plants as growing. One of the 

 conclusions reached by Hackel was that all of the cultivated sorghums 

 had been derived by cultivation from Johnson grass. This theory for 

 various reasons did not appeal to me, but did excite my curiosity. I 

 reasoned that if Johnson grass were the wild original of the sorghums we 

 ought occasionally to find specimens of Johnson grass which lacked the 

 underground rootstocks which make it so feared in the South as a weed. 

 And on the other hand I argued that if this Were the origin of the sor- 

 ghums we should occasionally find sorghum plants which produce root- 

 stocks. Three years of study failed to disclose any Johnson grass without 

 rootstocks or a sorghum which did possess rootstocks. 



Feeling, however, that there must exist a plant somewhat similar to 

 Johnson grass, and yet devoid of rootstocks, I wrote letters to botanical 

 correspondents in nearly all parts of the world, asking for packets of seed 

 of Johnson grass. When we grew these seeds, we found some very dif- 

 ferent plants. The important point, though, is that two of them — one 

 secured from Tunis, and the other from Sudan — proved to be plants of the 

 type which I had postulated must exist; namely, plants similar to Johnson 

 grass, but without rootstocks. The grass from Sudan proved to be very 

 desirable in our preliminary trials as a hay plant, and therefore quan- 

 tities of seed were grown and the plant distributed under the name Sudan 

 grass. 



Further investigation into these grasslike sorghums has revealed a 

 very much more complicated condition of affairs than I had believed. In 

 searching for the wild original of cultivated plants, botanists and agrono- 

 mists have usually looked for some one wild plant which was the original 

 of all the cultivated ones. Naturally when I obtained Sudan grass I was 

 inclined to think that this might be the wild original of all the sorghums. 

 Further investigation, however, indicates that the problem is very much 

 less simple. I was fortunately able to borrow from London and Berlin 

 all of their botanical material of the sorghums from Africa, and a study 

 of this material shows that in the continent of Africa, where alone the 

 true wild sorghums grow, there are at least ten or twelve wild forms. 

 Most of these are grasslike plants in a general way similar to Sudan 

 grass, but one or two of the wild ones seem to partake more of the nature 

 of the cultivated sorghums in having only one or a few stout stems and 

 relatively larger heads and seeds. Of the grasslike forms we have now 

 succeeded in securing four of the wild races and hope within a year or two 

 to secure the others. What their value may be in comparison with Sudan 

 grass it is impossible to predict, but it is quite possible that some of them 

 may be found superior to Sudan grass. 



