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BUCKWHEAT. 
pink colour, and bloom throughout July and 
August ; and its seeds are easily distinguish- 
able from those of the common species by their 
having toothed edges. It ripens more quickly, 
has a hardier habit, and is less likely to suffer 
damage from cold summers or from the incle- 
mency of mountainous districts, than the com- 
mon species; and is therefore generally preferred 
by the farmers of Switzerland, Piedmont, and 
some other alpine countries. But its flowers 
have an irregular and straggling order of bloom- 
ing; its flour is blackish and rather bitter ; and 
its quantity of produce, in the estimation of 
Von Thaer—though not in that of some other 
celebrated agriculturists —is inferior to the 
quantity yielded by the common species. The 
Piedmontese farmers give the name of Formen- 
| tine de Savoie to P. Fagopyrum, and the name of 
Granette or Formentine de Luzerne to P. tatari- 
cum.— The notch-leaved species, Polygonum 
emarginatum, was introduced to Great Britain 
from China near the end of last century. Its 
flowers are pink-coloured, and flourish in July and 
August ; and its seeds are much larger than those 
of P. Fagopyrum, and have larger and notched 
wings. It is cultivated in Nepaul; but when 
grown in our climate, a considerable proportion 
of its flowers are abortive.—The cymose species, 
Polygonum cymosum, was introduced to Great 
Britain from Nepaul about twenty years ago. 
Its seeds are larger, thicker - skinned, and 
more winged and flattened on the sides than 
those of P. Fagopyrum.—aA species called Poly- 
gonum odoratum, is said by Loureiro to be 
everywhere cultivated in Cochin - China as an 
esteemed vegetable for eating with broiled meat 
and fish; but this species does not seem to 
have yet been introduced to Britain—A new 
species or variety is noticed in the Bulletin des 
Sciences Agricoles of April 1831, as having been 
sent by M. Kausler to the Agricultural Society 
of Wurtemburg, for trial in their experimental 
gardens. This species or variety was popularly 
known as Le 6lé d’Italie sauvage, and had for 
some years been preferred to the common buck- 
wheat on account of suffering less damage from 
the weather, yielding a larger produce, and af- 
fording a whiter and better-tasted flour. Its 
flower is smaller and more deeply coloured than 
that of P. Fagopyrum. 
Buckwheat is much better suited for warm 
light lands than for cold heavy soils; and is no- 
where so certain or uniform a crop as oats or 
barley. It is exceedingly sensitive to climate, 
suffers comparatively great damage from fickle- 
ness and frequent changes of weather, and, un- 
der a variable climate, such as that of most dis- 
tricts of England, yields, under any amount of 
circumstances of soil and culture, an exceedingly 
variable produce. In countries which enjoy a 
genial and steady climate, and which have a 
poor light soil unsuitable for oats and not strong 
enough for barley, buckwheat possesses such 
I. 
d61 
surpassing value as to be capable of affording a 
chief and regular means of support to the whole 
population. It is, therefore, cultivated as a 
principal crop in portions of Nepaul, Cochin- 
China, Piedmont, the south of France, and other 
countries of similar soil, elevation, and climate; 
as a secondary crop, in Switzerland, Belgium, 
and many parts of Germany; and either not at 
all, or only as an occasional and very fitful crop, 
in almost every agricultural district of Great 
Britain and Ireland. Yet its eminent adaptation 
to sandy and semiarid soils obtains for it a re- 
cognised and systematic place in the complicated 
rotations of the Netherlands,—commands high | 
attention to it in the light lands about Berlin, 
particularly between Werneiche and Welsicken- 
dorff, Lewenberg, Steinbeck, and Wollenberg, so 
far as to the forest about Freyenwalde, — and 
even occasions it to be regularly cultivated, to a 
moderate extent, in Norfolk and Suffolk. But, 
except in these two English counties, it has never 
obtained much attention in Britain. Patches of || 
it which occur in other districts are usually of 
small extent, unconnected with systematic hus- 
bandry, and designed principally to encourage 
pheasants and other kinds of game. Yet, as will 
fully appear from a consideration of its culture, | | 
uses, and adaptations, it might, with great ad- i. 
vantage, be systematically cultivated in all the | 
drier and warmer districts of England, and would | 
probably be remunerating in even such parts of 
Scotland as the light sea-board lands on the mu- 
tual border of the counties of Haddington and 
Edinburgh. | 7 
Buckwheat is much more suitable for varying 
well-established rotations, and stimulating their 
weak-points, than for occupying a place in them 
as one of their regular members. It is often | 
peculiarly advantageous at a point when land is | 
over-exhausted by the previous crops of a rota- 
tion, and cannot be duly recruited with manures; 
for the succeeding crops; and, when thus em- || 
ployed, especially in a dry and warm season, it | | 
not only leaves the land in a better condition | 
than oats would leave it, but yields a more valu- 
able return of produce. When any prime soil, 
under one of the richest rotations, cannot be 
thoroughly tilled and cleaned for the reception 
of spring barley, it may most advantageously be 
withheld from the intended barley, and subjected 
to another month’s cleaning and mellowing in 
preparation for buckwheat; for it may derive 
from this month’s tillage all the benefits of a 
summer’s fallow,—and, should the season prove 
dry and warm, it will yield a crop of buckwheat 
nearly equal in money value to a crop of barley, 
—and, in the following growths, it will most 
probably produce a far larger volume of grass 
and clover, as sown with the buckwheat, than if 
they had been sown with barley. Buckwheat, 
when sown properly or thinly with grass seeds, 
has neither so suffocating an effect as barley 
upon the young grass-plants, nor robs them so 
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