UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 
BULLETIN No. 883 
Contribution from the Bureau of Plant Industry 
WM A. TAYLOR, Chief 
sunw- 
Washington, D. C. 
September 20, 1920 
EXPERIMENTS WITH FLAX ON BREAKING. 
By Charles H. Clark formerly Assistant Agronomist in Charge of Flax Investigations, 
Office of Cereal Investigations. 
CONTENTS 
Page. 
Flax as a sod crop 1 
The present flax area 2 
Extent 2 
Variations in soil 3 
Variations in climate 3 
The place of flax in the agriculture of the 
flax-producing States 1 3 
The Northern Great Plains Field Station and 
the surrounding district 4 
Location 4 
History 4 
Topography 4 
Soils 4 
Native vegetation 5 
Climate 5 
Scope of the experiments 8 
Experimental methods 8 
Size and arrangement of plats and rows 9 
Preparation of the land 10 
Interpretation of experimental results 11 
Flax experiments in plats ~c— 11 
History and description of varieties 11 
Agronomic results 13 
Analytical results 17 
Rate-of-seeding experiments 21 
Date-of-seeding experiments 21 
Flax experiments in nursery rows 22 
Source and variability of material 22 
Descriptive key to varieties 24 
Discussion of varieties by groups 25 
Summary 27 
FLAX AS A SOD CROP, 
For 128 years flax has been grown in the United States, principally 
for its seed. The invention of the cotton gin in 1792 and the conse- 
quent cheap production of cotton fiber practically ended the flax- 
fiber industry in this country. From that date flax ceased to be a 
crop vital to the daily needs of each family and community. Its 
culture on the farms of New England and the other Eastern States 
was soon discontinued. Since then it has been a cash crop grown on a 
large sale in areas where distance from markets and poor transporta- 
tion facilities called for a crop which possessed the greatest value per 
unit of bulk when marketed. The hardiness of the flax crop also 
made it popular in newly settled areas where poorly prepared seed 
beds were the rule. 
185529°— 20 1 
