PASPALUM

Northland Age, Volume IX, Issue 56, 23 April 1940, Page 2

PASPALUM

Sir.—l don’t know who W. P. Seaton is, who wrote recently on pastures for the North, but he seems to think he is an authority on grasses ar.d certainly gives good advice about lotus ar.gustissimus and ryegrass. Eut how absurd to call the sugary gum on paspalum ergot, when he himself says it is a totally different substance. As he says, ergot is a virulent poison, tut what evidence is there that paspalum seed can do harm? Though cf course if even the editor of the Age refers to it as ergot, as he did a while ago, everyone expects it to be poisonous, and imagination does the rest. It is a mystery to me, and a reflection on the intelligence of mankind, that we see our pastures burnt up by a few weeks’ dry weather, while paspalum goes on growing serenely. The only objection I have ever heard to it is that the cows can’t eat it down ! It will stand quite a lot of frost, but why cur teatree hills are not converted into rich pastures by its help is beyond me. I believe that if it were surface sown on burns it would need no ploughing, for it will stand a fire to get rid of second-growth teatree. And try it on slips on a hillside—that land would never slip again. And watch how the cattle bite at every patch of paspalum that accidently appears on your paddocks. All one has to do to get paspalum in your miserables pastures is to surface sow it on them before the winter. The North has a great advantage in that the climate suits paspalum ; the soil does not signify—the grass does well on the poorest land. Ycurs, etc., E. S. DUKES.