OLD-TIME SAILING SHIPS

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 4, Issue 157, 19 September 1941, Page 5

OLD-TIME SAILING SHIPS

GIVE BRITAIN WARTIME CATTLE FODDER

Seeds accidentally taken to England last century iri the holds of American sailing ships have given Britain's farmers a valuable wartime cattle fodder. It is rice grass, or Spartina townsendii, a plant flourishing on coastal mud-flats or river estuaries where it prevents the washing away of banks by the action of tides and currents. Much rice grass has spread naturally, but in recent years extensive plantations have been made for coastal protection. The modern English variety, discovered at Hytlie, in Southampton water, in 1870, is a cross between the native species and that brought from America, and is so vigorous that whenever it comes into- competition with either oif its parents it eliminates them completely. Agricultural experts who have carried out cattle feeding trials with rice grass have found that under good conditions it makes splendid hay. It is also grazed readily by all classes of livestock. In New South Wales grass has been planted as fodder in the extensive saltlands of the Riverina district, where it absorbs the' overflow from artesian wells. Experiments with it are also being carried out in South Africa, Indira and the Sudan.