George Vasey
Published: 2013-09
Total Pages: 66
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This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1889 edition. Excerpt: ... CHRYSOPOGON. Chrysopogon nutans (Sorghum nutans) (Wild Oats). The stalks are 4 to 6 feet high, smooth, hollow, straight, and having at tho top a narrow panicle, 6 to 12 inches long, of handsome straw-colored or brownish flowers, which is gracefully drooping at the top. The spikelots are at the ends of the slender branches of the loose panicle, generally of a yellowish color. At the base of each of the spikelets are two (one on each side) short, feathery pedicels; the flowers which they are supposed to have been made to support have entirely disappeared. The outer glumes are about three lines long, both alike, lanceolate, obtnsish, coriaceous, five to seven-nerved, the lower one sparsely hairy, and with hairs at the base and on the stalk below. This is a tall, perennial grass, having a wide range over all the country east of the Rocky Mountains. It grows rather sparsely and forms a thin bed of grass. It is a nutritious grass, but should be cut early, as at full maturity the stems are coarse and are rejected by cattle. (Plate 30.) SORGHUM. In this genus the spikelets are much as in Chrysopogon and Andropogon, differing chiefly in habit and in the glumes of the fertile spikelets becoming hardened after flowering. There are several species. Sorghum halepense (Johnson Grass; Mean's Grass). This grass is a native of Nor thern Africa and the country about the Mediterranean Sea. It was introduced into cultivation in this country more than fifty years ago, and has recently attracted renewed attention, especially iu the Southern States. The name Johnson grass, which is the one now most generally adopted in this country, originated from William Johnson, of Alabama, who introduced the grass into that State from South Carolina about the year 1S40. It...