THE PIGEON PEA! CULTURE IN HAWAII. 5 
corn per acre after receiving the best cultivation produced a very 
fine crop when it was planted to pigeon peas under the same condi- 
tions. In the succeeding three years 20 acres was planted to pigeon 
peas, which were regularly harvested as a seed and forage crop. 
Five tons of seed has been distributed for planting, 100 tons of hay 
cured, and half the above-mentioned amounts of hay and grain have 
been milled and fed, either alone or in combination with other feeds 
to all kinds of live stock. In 1918 and 1919 fully 500 acres was 
planted to the crop on the island of Maui, and by the end of 1920 
more than 1,000 acres was growing in the Haiku district alone. 
During 1919 one Haiku ranch harvested more than 10 tons daily 
from 350 acres planted to this crop. This was cured and milled in 
an up-to-date milling plant, and formed the basic constituent of 
hundreds of tons of mixed feed turned out during the past year. 
The managers of a Lanai ranch have become so favorably impressed 
with the possibilities of this new crop that they have under way 
plantings covering an aggregate of 2,000 acres. 
A Molokai ranch has marketed some of its best conditioned steers 
from pigeon-pea pasture. At the Haiku demonstration and experi- 
ment farm, work mules, horses, milk cows, swine, and poultry were 
fed pigeon peas as a large part of their ration covering a period of 
four years. Corn, in 100-bushel crops, and pineapples, in 20-ton 
crops, were grown on lands that were renovated by the culture and 
turning under of pigeon peas after the peas had served well their 
purpose first as a harvested crop, then as a pasture, and finally as 
green manure. 
BOTANY AND AGRICULTURAL HISTORY. 
The pigeon pea {Cajanus indicus or C. cajan) is an erect 
leguminous shrub, attaining a height of 3 to 10 feet under ordinary 
culture in Hawaii. The leaves are 3- foliate, the racemed flowers 
either yellow, or red and yellow, and the ovary is subsessile and has 
few ovules. The pods vary greatly in size and shape in the different 
varieties, but are usually 3, 4, or 5 seeded and constricted between 
the seeds by oblique linear depressions. When not crowded, the 
plants branch freely well to the base. The stems are slender but 
heavily foliaged in most varieties, and especially so after the plant 
has been cut back in the first harvest. 
The generic name Cajanus is derived from the Malayan name, 
Katjang, and the only species is C. indicus or C . cajan. Some doubt 
exists as to whether this species was originally a native of India or 
of tropical Africa. It is extensively cultivated throughout India, 
even up to an altitude of 6,000 feet. In Porto Rico, whence the first 
seeds planted in Hawaii came some 20 or more years ago, two prin- 
