The Big Family of Legumes 

A Pictorial and Descriptive Listing of Most of the Important Kinds and Varieties 
AN used leguminous plants to 
| \ / enrich the soil centuries before 
he knew what made them use- 
ful. Records from the oldest civiliza- 
tions of Egypt and eastern Asia demon- 
strate the ancient use of various Old 
World beans, peas, vetches, soybeans, 
and alfalfa. One of the early Greek 
botanists, Theophrastus, in summariz- 
ing much that had been learned up to 
his time, which was the third century 
before Christ, wrote of leguminous 
plants “reinvigorating” the soil and 
stated that beans were not a burden- 
some crop to the ground but even 
seemed to manure it. The Romans laid 
emphasis on the use of leguminous 
plants for green manuring; they also 
introduced the systematic use of crop 
rotations, a practice that was forgotten 
for a time during the early Middle 
Ages. 
In the Americas as well as the Old 
World, there was a well-developed na- 
tive agriculture that had not neglected 
the indigenous legumes. When Colum- 
bus reached the West Indies, he was 
much impressed by cultivated fields of 
corn, sweetpotatoes, cassava, and pea- 
nuts, the last a legume. The early 
European immigrants found the In- 
dians of the Atlantic coast raising na- 
tive legumes with their corn. In the 
Southwest, beans such as the tepary 
bean were cultivated, and wild legumi- 
nous seeds were ground and eaten by 
the Indians, the mesquite being a sta- 
ple food of many tribes. Legumes are 
second only to the cereal grasses as 
sources of human food and animal for- 
age. 
The Leguminosae of the world in- 
cludes some twelve to fifteen thousand 
species and is surpassed in numbers by 
only one other plant family, the Com- 
positae, with about twenty to twenty- 
five thousand species. The grasses of 
the world, so important agriculturally, 
embrace probably 10,000 species, and 
great expanses of grassland in every 
continent constitute one of the world’s 
major vegetation types. Legumes and 
composites, however, usually occur as 
scattered secondary components of the 
native vegetation. Although no ex- 
haustive check list has recently been 
compiled, it is estimated that there are 
nearly 2,000 species of leguminous 
plants native to the United States. Many 
foreign species are naturalized here, 
.and about 50 legumes, mostly intro- 
duced, are grown in this country as 
commercial crop plants. Many exotic 
and some native legumes are cultivated 
as ornamentals. 
The large number of leguminous 
plants to be found in the United States 
necessitated some selection. Strictly 
24 
by 
EDWARD H. GRAHAM 
U. S. Soil Conservation Service 
ornamental plants are excluded. The 
species treated are: (1) Those that 
have actually been used to control ero- 
sion or are unusually promising for 
their erosion-control value; (2) those 
” ‘ Pod or legume 

ee 
S41 Stamens 
Sas 
CR 
ee Pistil 
Peo flower 
Bipinnate 

Leaves 
with known records of use by wildlife; 
and (3) those of significance to the soil 
and wildlife conservationist for some 
other particularly pertinent reason. 
However, both native and introduced 
4 
\y 
| 


= 
Standard 
Cassia flower 
Pinnate 
Simple or unifoliolate 

Palmate or digitaie 
SEED TRADE 
