UNAPPRECIATED FORAGE CROPS.

Otago Witness, Issue 2104, 21 June 1894, Page 8

UNAPPRECIATED FORAGE CROPS.

It is a common characteristic to accord belief to what is marvellous, and for that reason the over- sanguine reports which are sometimes published, setting forth the imaginary merits of newly introduced plants, receive more attention than they deserve. Prickly comfrey, Latherus sylvestris, and serradella have each played the big gooseberry in their turn. I am sorry to say that I have myself been several times deceived, and once or twice I have dished up some big gooseberries in the columns of the Field. Some years ago I over-praised gorse, having been to some extent deceived by an article which appeared many years ago in the Journal of the R.A.S.E. Not feeling quite satisfied, I wrote to a gentleman who was using gorse in Ireland, and his report was highly favourable. Soon after I met with a gentleman who was cultivating gorse in the south of England on the most approved method, andusing it in every form, crushed and green, and ensiled. He showed me fields of gorse drilled in rows, and I saw the men cuttiDg the young crop, and, " at the other end," I saw it going into the silos, and into the cows and other cattle, including horses, and I was told that the results in milk and butter and muscular force were very satisfactory. I took some notes, but before asking for another column I waited awhile, and may now say that the latest report I can give of furze is, that on all but the poorest soils other forage crops are superior to it. If the soil is too poor to grow anything else, then one may try furze without being much disappointed, perhaps.

I may also mention that about 15 years ago, or more, I was rather taken in about prickly comfrey. Finding myself at Hinckley, in Leicestershire, where a great advocate of this plant resided, I called with my note-book and found him out, but the prickly comfrey was at home. He was the largest grower of the roots of this plant for sale in the country. They are very readily propagated, and there they were in every nook and corner, in coach house and stables, and in every shed and shanty. Sets were spread upon the floor, cut up small, and, I suppose, watered and covered with a little earth, and I dare say they were sold by cbe million ; but the propagation oE prickly comfrey is not now extensive. At the present time, however, an association in Dublin is recommending prickly comfrey for the regeneration of Ireland, and they report the plant as having succeeded prodigiously in that country. It may be so ; the climate is moister, and probably more suitable for it. In this country it has failed apparently. At any rate, many farms were stocked with it from Hinckley, and I have known it to be very carefully tried in many caßes, but not with much succeßß, and the only large plot of more than an acre that I have met with was in the fenland of Cambridgeshire. Having admitted the errors of some over-

sanguine authors, I am glad to acknowledge that in Professor Muir's article in the Journal of the Bath and West on " Unappreciated Forage Crops" there are no big gooseberries. The first plant in the list is lucern, a forage crop which Arthur Young did his best to extend, and which is still little known except in those rich loams covering the chalk which are found in the Isle of Thanet. Here lucern is widely cultivated. Mr Muir recommends it for deep, dry soils, with lime in them, as a productive and at the same time a restorative crop, gathering material from the subsoil and the air. He very fairly recommends kidney vetch \ Anthyllis Vulneraria) for light, dry soils, with lime in them. It is a crop to cut or feed early in the season, and so are trefoil and white clover, and when I have asked the best authorities about kidney vetch in tho great sheepbreeding district of Wilts and Hants — where it is an indigenous plant — they have said, " Ob, yos, it is useful, but not so useful and productive as some other plants." Mr Hugh Kaynbird, of Basingstoke, is a very first-rate authority ou the varieties of cultivated plants— forago crops or cereals— and on their qualities and respective merits, and in consulting him about kidney vetch he has not greatly praised it. All Hampshire sheep know the plant, but they would be surprised to find themselves folded on it. A poetic firm of seedsmen have conferred on thousand-headed kale the second name of "lamb's delight." Kidney vetch might perhaps be called " lamb's affright," since they would greatly prefer rape, swede tops, tares, trefoil, trifoiium, and several other things.

When serradella (Ornithopus sativus) came into Hotice, I wrote to a very eminent iirm of seedsmen to make inquiries, and the information they gave me was to the effect that they had very carefully weighed serradella in the balance and found it wanting. Mr Muir confirms this. It is good food, rich in nitrogenous constituents, but the crop yields badly, and for that reason it will never displace the ordinary forage crops. Its greatest merit is its tolerance of dry weather and poor sandy soils. Wood vetchling (Latherus sylvestris) has been developed by careful cultivation from its wild prototype, and is said to have produced enormous yields of food for stock in Germany. In this country it has been tried at Cirencester with satisfactory results, having grown luxuriantly during the drought. Speaking generally, though very nutritious, it has proved inferior to some other forage plants. ' Bokhara clover (Meliotus alba) is out of the running, though it has played the big geoseberry in its turn, having been much written up. It has been called •' sweet clover," the dried forage being sweet smelling, though the taste is bitter. The plant is coarse, and the stems become hard and woody early in their growth. It is used at Rothamsted in certain experimental plots to exhaust the subsoil of nitrogen, which it does more rapidly than any other plant,^)wing to its long, strong roots and the vigour of its habit. I had my eye early on Bokhara clover, and liked it for its size and scent, and a most intelligent friend took much pains to obtain the seed. I think he had it from Lawson's, who were very distinguished seedsmen, botanists, and writers when all the great existing firms were either in long clothes or unborn. My Mend was so pleased with the plant that he strongly recommended it to me, and I should perhaps have introduced it to notice when a visit to Rothamsted opened my eyes. So much cold water was thrown on it there that I wrote to my friend, who had by that time discovered its demerits.

The yellow variety of lupine — Lupinus luteus — was much extolled by Arthur Young, who had seen it in France. It has produced^ 21 tons per acre on a soil containing 95 per cent, of insoluble silica. Green or dry, it is rejected by all stock except sheep, but on poor sands it is worth trial. Still I think that experimenters would do well, before giving it to stock, to obtain volume 111, fourth series, of the Journal of the Bath and West Society, and study Mr Muir's account of the plant. Tall oat grass — Avena elatior — a weed of the hedgerows, is a useful forage plant for dry soils containing lime, bulking heavily even in a drought. It is not a plant for all soils, however, Awnless brome — Bromus inermis — has been much recommended by several seedsmen, in whose catalogues full information may be found. It was introduced under the name of Hungarian forage grass, and the reason probably why it has not won much favour is that the crop is less than that of several other grasses except in the case of dry and shallow soils, and Schrceder's brome is a ooarser plant than the above and allied to it. Mr Muir sums up its qualities briefly and fairly, and so do some of the catalogues, which may usually be trusted for giving reliable information in the case of old subjects like this, but not always in the case of some new plant when the seed is dear and the seedsmen hopeful, and when perhaps they are not so well informed as my friend was in writing me bis final report on Bokhara clover.

The opinion given of sorghum in Mr Muir's well-informed article agrees with my own. UndeMhe name of Holcus saccharatus it was grown in a warm and sheltered field near my farm 25 years ago, and the heavy crop, covering six or seven acres, had a magnificent appearance. The same year I had a plot of it in my garden, in rich, heavy soil, and it grew 9ft or 10ft high, and produced handsome tassels, in which some seed might have ripened, but an early frost cut down the plant and prevented it. The summer of that year was unusually hot and fine, and I need only add that sorghum is an exotic quite unsuited for our ordinary climate.

It may be seasonable to add hero that little confidence can be placed in the introduction of new and better forage plants from abroad. The world has already been well searched. The Romans were great distributors of improved plants which they collected from the countries they conquered. They brought several of these to England. The Crusaders brought a few, and then followed the great navigators of Queen Elizabeth's time, when Europe received maize and the potato. Within the past century and more new introductions have been effected by various learned naturalists and travellers, from Humboldt to Thomas Andrew Knight, and in recent times the great seedsmen have been the chief improvers of plants. But the world has been well ransacked so far as the plants of agriculture are concerned, and the trial grounds of the experimental seedsmen — who have not been traders only — are seldom much enriched from abroad. The improvement and modification of many of the most important plants of the farm have, however, been very great, and in that direction we may expect farther progress, in which forage plants may be inoluded. — H. E., in the Field.