OLD-TIME SAILING SHIPS

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume 76, 10 September 1941, Page 8

OLD-TIME SAILING SHIPS

GIVE BRITAIN WARTIME CATTLE FODDER Seeds accidentally taken to England last century in the holds of American sailing ships have given Britain’s farmers a valuable war-time cattle fodder. It is rice grass, or Spartina townsendii, a plant flourishing on coastal mudflats 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 Hythe, 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 of 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 rice 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, India and the Sudan.