SUGAR-CANE CULTURE FOR SIRUP PRODUCTION. 7 
A variety of cane very widely grown in small garden patches, 
primarily as a chewing cane, generally spoken of in Georgia and 
northern Florida as Green cane, is apparently identical with the 
Otaheite of Cuba and the Bourbon of the British West Indies. 
Because of the soft texture of the pith, this cane is a favorite 
among the inhabitants for chewing. Many farmers also plant it 
for sirup production, as it yields a lighter colored product than the 
Louisiana Purple or the Red Ribbon cane. Because of its late ma- 
turity, its low yield, and its strong susceptibility to disease, however, 
it is not a good commercial sirup or sugar making cane. It is also 
a disagreeable cane to handle at harvest time because of the numerous 
line prickles that cover parts of the leaves near the stem and the leaf 
sheaths near the midrib of the leaf. 
A variety called Green Ribbon cane in Georgia and Simpson cane 
in some parts of Florida is practically the same as the last men- 
tioned except in color, and it has the same advantages and disad- 
vantages. The two are frequently grown together and one is doubt- 
less a bud variation of the other. The color of the Green Ribbon 
cane is green and yellow in longitudinal stripes. 
SEEDLING VARIETIES. 
While bud vaiiation from striped varieties occurs, giving self- 
colored varieties, and while the opposite phenomena, viz, striped 
varieties coming by bud variation from self-colored varieties, have 
also been observed, no great success has attended experimenters in 
attempts to produce an improved strain of sugar cane by selec- 
tion through bud variation or plant variation with respect to sugar 
content and purity of juice. Because of the vegetative way of 
propagating the cane, the plants of successive seasons are in reality 
but a continuation of the growth of the plants of preceding seasons. 
Consequently there is but little chance for variation in its eco- 
nomic properties. It is otherwise with plants produced from seed, 
whether the flowers are fertilized by chance in nature or are hand- 
pollinated under control. In a large number of the enterprising 
sugar experiment stations, work has been started in producing and 
testing seedling canes. In most cases the fertilizing of the flowers is 
left to chance, or, at most, resort is had only to planting in proximity 
the two varieties from which it is desired to obtain a cross, thereby 
increasing the chance of getting the desired cross. In a few instances 
the experimenters have undertaken to cross-fertilize the flowers 
under control, thereby producing strains with known pedigree. 
However, as the flowers are almost microscopic in size it is very 
tedious work, and as a large percentage of the progeny is unpromis- 
ing or worthless, progress toward better strains by this means is very 
slow. 
