VALUE OF RICE GRASS.

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXV, Issue 18202, 1 March 1929, Page 11

VALUE OF RICE GRASS.

MAKING OF NEW LANDS. There may be a day, not far off. when stock feeders will include home-grown rice grass in their ration schemes, comments a British agricultural journal. Officially called corcf or rice grass, it is a tall grass that inhabits maritime UiuUs. It was first recorded in this country on the Southampton salt marshes, near llythe, in 1870. Since then it has continually spread into all the waters of Southampton and the Isle of Wight, along the Solent, westward to Poole Harbour and eastward to Chichester and Rye. It is a robust, tall-growing, rather rigid grass, raising its haulms 2 feet 6 inches above tho mud, with creeping rhizomes just below the surface. It is spread by the tides carrying either seeds or fragments of runners. These grow into tufts, and the tuft* expand, ultimately converting a mud flat into a spur tin a meadow. Its immediate benefits are as an active reclaimer of muddy foreshores, and in time it will doubtless be in general use as paving the way lor making new land. It also protects banks and sea--walls from scour and erosion by raising and holding the mud in front. To the farmer not interested in tlie foreshore, chief interest lies in the possibilities as a feed for stock. In the spartina areas farm animals oat the grass greedily, even going down to the meadows to graze as the tide runs off. Experiments are being carried out in this direction at Chelmsford, where they have had the happv inspiration that the grass might be the very plant for which the Essex marshes have been waiting. Much has to be done yet, however, for we are at the vorv beginning of its exploitation as a fodder grass But. as Mr Oliver remarks, some future Biffen, by intercrossing and selection, should be in a position to offer farmers strains of spartina suited to different requirements.