THE AUSTRATINN GARDENER. 
12 
sbtamed. In all, he secured five thou- 
zand seedlings, and stranger plants were 
mever seen. yes 
Some bore strawberry leaves, others 
zaspberry, others pear leaves, a few were ~ 
armed with short prickles, but nine-tenths 
grew shoots as smooth as an apple twig. 
A few, very few, however, bore any blos- 
soms at all, and.out of all the five thousand 
only two bore fruit—one like a pale black- 
berry, but larger, the other of the same 
mature, but a dark mulberry color. 
fmal crushing blow to the experiment 
came when it was found that neither of the 
new fruits had any seeds! yarel 
On the other hand, Mr. Burbank has 
jhad many solid -results from his experi- 
ments. He'has taken the hardy, savage, 
worthless beach plum of his country, and, 
by many crosses with good plums, has pro-. 
duced a new'fruit of wonderful productive- 
mess. He has increased the size and 
quality of the Californian wild plum by 
two fold. _ He has grown a hybrid plum 
whose blossoms are declared to be ‘‘steel- 
dined and _frost-resisting’”—an invaluable 
qualification in a country where frosts are 
liable to do great harm to the fruit trees. 
And he has produced a stoneless plum— 
x plum which bears a fully developed 
kernel, but no hard shell to it, so that one 
may bite freely into it without hesitation, 
and enjoy the nutty flavor of the kernel. 
Mr. Burbank hopes in time to remove the 
=xell from the kernels of other fruits, and - 
is confident that if he were to try for-ten 
x ars he could produce a walnut without a 
shell if it were desirable. 
But his most surprising and successful . 
experiment was the crossing of the plum 
_ vith the apricot. This produced a fruit 
with a distinctly new flavor, which has 
ben christened the Plumcot. The fruit is 
like an apricot, but more highly colored— 
a fine fruit for dessert. 
The United States Government has 
taken the subject of fruit-breeding in hand, 
and its Department of Agriculture main- 
tains excellent laboratories where new 
varieties are produced. 
The most important fruit which the Go- 
vernment definitely set itself to produce 
as a hardy orange that will survive frosts. 
Frosts every now and then play havoc with 
the groves of the golden fruit, and the ex- 
perimenters hope to defy ib by crossing 
the Japanese orange with the common 
sweéb orange. The Japanese plant, a‘ 
though its fruit is of little account, 1s 
hardy, and loses its leaves in winter, and 
as it is in:a quiéscent state when frosts 
eccur, it is less likely to be frost-bitten 
than the ordinary kind that grows all the 
winter through. 
The English firm of Messrs. Veitch have - 
produced a raspberry and blackberry 
cross, named the “Mahdi,” which is a de- 
licious fruit with a novel: flavor. - And 
Mr. W! Culverwell_has succeeded in obtain- 
ing fruits froma black currant and. a. 
gocseberry hybrid—truits a little larger - 
than a black currant, but in color like a 
red but destitute of seeds, and set with fine 
hairs. A curious point is that whereas 
the gooseberries usually haye solitary blos- 
som, and currants often a doz un, the hybrid 
‘The 
produces little- bunches of four. together... 
Such are the surprises of fruit-breeding. 
SOUTH AUSTRALIAN GRASSES. 
By J. G. O. Teppnr, F.L.S., F.S.Sc., ke. 
: _; (Continued.) aes 
PANICACE. 
Andropogon exaltatus, R..Brown, be- 
longs to a genus of about a hundred species, 
distributed over the five continents. Aus- 
tralia contains some 24, of which South 
Australia only claims two or three, by no 
means conspicuous by their frequency of 
occurrence. The genus is distinguished 
by its simple ‘branching spikes, which -are 
more or less hairy, and includes the so- 
called Lemon grass. . 
A. exaltatus is perennial, and occurs on 
rocky banks near watercourses, forming 
small tufts with long, very narrow, awl- 
shaped leaves, much broader sheaths, and 
erect rigid stalks from two to three feet 
high. The panicle or ear is either short 
and dense or long and interrupted, consist- 
ing of erect spikes about three quarters of 
an inch long, and hairy, of which usually 
two (seldom three) are seated upon a short 
common stalk. The compound spikelets 
are about one quarter of an inch, and bear 
short awns. The writer has collected it 
on the banks of the Onkaparinga among 
the rocks, and on the Little Para at 
Bishop’s Springs. Bentham cites it as oc- 
curring at the River Torrens, Crystal 
Brook ; the Flinders Range and Lake Eyre 
on the authority of Baron Ferd. v. Mueller 
and Andrews. The former (Census, p. 
132) records it also as extending to Western 
and Northern Australia. 
A. bombycinus, R. Br., extends through- 
out all Australia, and is almost without 
any hairs, excepting the ear. The leaves 
are narrow, flat, and rather stiff, while the 
ear is longer, and the spikes, though at first 
erect, soon spread out, and become reflexed 
or bent back. It is recorded as occurring 
near Lyndoch, Gawler, the Murray, and in 
Central Australia. 
Anthistiria ciliata, Linn, jun., the well- 
known Kangaroo Grass, accurs not only all 
over Australia, but is also spread over the 
tropical parts of Asia and Africa. It is 
a perennial grass, forming moderately- 
sized tufts. In the early days of the 
colony it was very abundant, being pro- 
minent among the others by its moderately 
broad, flat, smooth, soft, dark-green leaves 
and reddish brown, stiff, and erect stalks 
from two to four feet high. The sheaths 
of the leaves are sometimes hairy, and the 
ear is formed of not very numerous clusters 
of spikelets, of which the upper are sessile, 
the lower ones stalkéd. The rhachis or 
spikelet-bearing axis is covered with long 
brown hairs, the awn is very long, at the 
base enclosing the free seed. _ It is spirally 
twisted above this for some distance when 
ripe, and the untwisted part extended at a 
right angle. This form, observable in all 
the Spear Grasses, denotes a provision for 
securing the burial of the seed in the soil 
to a sufficient depth, so as to ensure pro- 
tection from fire and other dangers; also 
to secure the most favorable conditions for 
germination and rooting. The process is 
the following :—-When the fruit drops to 
-the ground the heavier, sharply pointed, 
Jan. 9, 1904 
ward, the bend of the other end causing it 
to be elevated. When moistened by dew 
or rain the spiral twist unrolls with con- 
siderable energy, 
quite straight. During this operation the 
- seed end becomes soon fixed nearly upright 
in the ground, -.nd is screwed into it on ac--_ 
count of the free end being stopped from. 
moving: around by such obstacles as the- 
stems and leaves of grasses, &c., the barbed. 
point preventing retraction when the much 
more gently acting reverse motion takes. 
place when drying takes place. Every 
casual wetting, therefore, forces it deeper- 
down, till the soaking rains of autumn 
bring about germination. 
tion causes the fruit of this and other like 
grasses with similar seeds to penetrate the. — 
body of sheep, &c., when it becomes en- 
tangled in the covering of the body. 
The Kangaroo Grass shows best on rich 
and moderately rich, somewhat loose soil, 
but also occurs on sand and in crevices of 
rocks. Through over stocking proper seed-. 
ing and renewal of the old decaying tufts. 
is stopped, and the grass has now become 
rather scarce, and has been more exten-- 
sively replaced than any other of the com- 
mon grasses by introduced annuals. 
is much to be regretted, as it represents a 
first-class fodder plant, and is much liked by 
all stock when not too rank. It fruits 
from October to January. 
Three other species are found in tropical 
Australia. 
Alopecurus geniculatus, Linne, extends. - 
over Australia and Tasmania, and is also 
common throughout the temperate parts of 
the Northern Hemisphere. It forms dense 
low tufts in the scrub of the hill districts. 
The leaves are flat, soft, and rather narrow, 
but only a few inches long. The stalks 
are more or less procumbent or bent down 
at the base, and those at one of the lower 
knots bend up sharply, hence the specific 
name of “‘knee-jointed.’ The stems are 
only from three or twelve inches high, and 
bear a slender, cylindrical, closely-imbri- 
cated spike from one to two inches long, 
with glumes hairy at the keel, and about 
one-twelfth of an inch long; the hair-like 
awn is also short. This grass flowers 
about the end of February, and is not very 
common. 
OPERATIONS FOR JANUARY. 
(By W. J. Atren.) 
There are few districts in the State which have 
not felt ‘the beneficial effects of the bountiful 
rains with which we have been favored during 
the past few months, and at the time of writing 
there is every prospect of heavy crops of all kinds 
of fruits. With the subsoil soaked. as it is, there 
is no doubt but that with ordinary cultivatior 
there will he a tendency on the part of the trees ¢ 
overbear, and it therefore behoves the grower to 
see that he does not permit too much fruit to re~ 
“main on any of his trees, and to avo‘'d this evil it 
may be found necessary to ‘thin’ heavily this 
season so as not to exhaust the stre eth of the 
trees by overbearing this season, to the detriment 
cf next year’s crop. It is now an established fect 
that one. case of good fruit'is worth two of infe- 
rior—I might say often times worth a half-dozen 
eases of poorly grown fruit. Just as much eare 
ought tobe given to the cultivation this yen® as. 
-and barbed end is usually directed down-- 
till the awn becomes. 
The same ac-- 
This. 
© 
