The Book of Useful Plants

Front matter

me ~sottteas Putas}

SIA at

Class no. lo Dlo Pook no. ay. lo B Clecession no. ay 0, lo SO sincera Ants

Preface

_ The world of plants is a wonder world to children. The growing of a plant, from seed to seed, is a wonderful experience. The wheat that makes our bread can trace its family line back to the time when men lived in caves and were wild as the beasts with whom they contended without | weapons. Grains and other plants that have ministered for centuries to the comfort and happiness of the race have long, interesting histories. A wonderful future lies before each one. We need but an introduction. Their stories grip our

interest.

Boys and girls are learning to know and to grow plants. The New Agriculture has a place for each one of them. To be ready, they must learn all they can about plants. To help them to wider knowledge is the author’s reason for writing this book.

Table Of Contents

Bg ea

BARLEY .

CORN. ae eae Mor oy in THE WONDERFUL MAIZE PLANT .

CHAPTER I RIcE

A YELLOow field that waves like wheat, but at nearer view looks more like oats, comes to harvest, sometimes twice a year, in the warm countries of the globe, especially in the regions near the sea. This is the rice crop, that feeds nearly half of the human race. Rice does well even with poor tillage, on poor soil; and better when given the careful culture that a good farmer puts upon a “‘money crop,” one he grows to sell.

The rice plant is a grass, with long, narrow leaves, and wiry stems from two to five feet high. In India and Australia wild rice is found growing to-day on the edges of marshy sloughs and along rivers. From these wild grasses the natives gathered the seeds with care thousands of years ago, and, gradually, to the wild supply was added the harvest of patches sown with the gathered seed and improved by cultivation. Other regions got the seed, and so the crop spread eastward through what is now the great Chinese Empire, Japan, Siam, and the islands between India and Australia.

The culture of rice in the valley of the Euphrates was described by historians who wrote centuries before the Christian Era. Rice is mentioned in the Talmud. The Moors established it in Spain. It was grown on both sides of the Mediterranean Sea; with especial success in Italy. The boy Columbus might have seen thousands of acres of rice growing in the marshy lands about Genoa and Pisa, as he wandered about, dreaming of that far-off India he hoped to reach by a new route. His expeditions opened the way for the rice industry in Mexico and Central America. In 1647 the English attempted to grow rice in the swamps owned by the Virginia Colony, but that was out of its natural habitat — too far north.

The introduction of rice into the South was an accident, though it must surely have come. In 1694 a sailing vessel, bound for England from Madagascar, encountered a gale off the coast of South Carolina and was obliged to put into the port of Charleston for repairs, Here the captain found the Governor to be an old acquaintance. During their exchange of visits a bag of rice was brought ashore, and the Governor had it sown on a piece of swampy land he owned. The crop was a good one, and the planters of the neighbourhood went enthusiastically into rice culture. A. dozen years later seventeen shiploads of rice left the port for England — the beginning of our export trade in this grain.

The Carolinas, Louisiana, and (lately) Texas, are the rice-growing states. Japan, Hawaii, and Mexico ship rice to American markets. The spread of rice culture was rapid under the slavery system in the South, but the Civil War almost ruined it. Slowly and steadily it has revived, and now is a great and growing agricultural industry.

The centuries of cultivation have developed many kinds of rice adapted to different soils, different regions, different modes of culture. Over two thousand varieties are listed. No other grain has as many. If no other record existed to prove the antiquity of the domestication of the wild species, the multitude of varieties would be proof enough. Most of them must be grown on level fields that can be flooded. But there are varieties that need the same treatment as wheat.

These are called “upland,” or “hill” rice. The “wet”? rice includes all the varieties that must have water about the roots, or they die of thirst.

The famous ‘‘Carolina gold” variety was developed by a planter who went into his fields at harvest time and selected for seed the best heads with the longest kernels he could find. Year after year he persevered. The variety was thus “fixed.” Many great plantations of the Far East send to the Carolinas for seed, rather than grow the short-grained native sorts, for the Carolina rice greatly increases the yield. Japan has a famous rice called Kiushiu, in great demand for seed in other countries. Its kernel is short and broad, and does not break in the mill as does the longgrained rice.

The Chinese Empire has a tremendous population, but few large cities. The people are thickly distributed over the country, where they live on what can be raised on little farms — we would call them mere patches of land. The failure of crops means famine. Rice is the principal crop. No wonder the wise Emperor, Chinnong, in the year 2800 B.C., established the annual ceremonial of the sowing of the “‘five holy plants,” that the people should keep in mind that these stood always between them and famine.

BREAD PLANTS v%

A field attached to the Temple of Earth and Heaven, at Peking, is worked into perfect condition in anticipation of the ceremony. The “Son of Heaven,” as the Emperor is called, plows four furrows, with a wonderfully ornamented plow, kept in the temple for this purpose. Then the princes, the high dignitaries, and the court attendants, down the scale of rank, take turns at the plow. Forty laborers, deserving of the honor, are allowed to finish the task of preparation. Then the Emperor sows the rice, himself; princes sow millet, wheat, barley and beans. These grains are tended with especial care as they grow, and harvested by officials of high rank. The crops of each grain are stored in the temple, and used on special occasions in making offerings to the spirits of the dead ancestors of the ruling Emperor.

Viceroys in the outlying provinces of the Empire enact the same ceremony, so the people are all reached by its influence.

China’s population of 400,000,000 is more than five times that of the United States. In spite of all efforts, the people cannot raise all the rice they need. The exportation of this grain has for centuries been forbidden. Little Japan, with 50,000,000 population, exports quantities yearly.

The United States uses twice as much rice each year as it produces.

RICE FARMING

Rice culture in the United States is usually carried on in the most up-to-date manner, with improved, labor-saving machinery. The fields must be level, the soil a clay loam, with stiff clay under it to hold the water, and later to support the heavy harvester. Reclaimed swamps and the flats subject to floods along river courses were the first rice lands of the South. The fields must be surrounded by levees, or dykes, to regulate the water supply. After the grain is drilled in and has sprouted, the water is let in by raising the gates, and kept rising as the stems lengthen. The grass and weeds are mostly drowned out, but the water is drained off to allow the plants to get one good hoeing. After this, the water is admitted again, and it keeps rising until flowering time. The rice plant heads like oats, in a branching cluster of single flowers. ‘The one grain in a spikelet, is enclosed in two tight glumes, one carrying the long awn, if it is a bearded variety. Examine any bag of rice, and you can find a grain still in the glumes, that we call the “Shull.”

The water supply is often many feet lower than the rice field. Pumps are used to bring it up, or it may be elevated by the principle of the siphon, a method that saves power generated by engines. Deep wells supply water to the irrigating ditches in some rice-growing sections of the Southwest. This allows tracts far removed from river courses to come under this form of agriculture.

Before the field turns yellow, the land is drained, and the reapers and binders cut and bind the grain, which is shocked, then stacked for later threshing.. The use of machinery greatly reduces the need of hand labor, which is far more expensive in this country than in the Tropics and the Far East.

The methods of growing rice have changed little since the beginning of its cultivation in China and India. The plow is most primitive, often little more than a crooked pole, with its nose in the mud, dragged along by a stupid water buffalo.

The preparation of the field is often only the stirring up of the mud at the bottom of a shallow swamp, obstructed by tree roots and rubbish. The seed bed is a level patch, better prepared. The seed is sown broadcast, often sprouted beforehand. When the shoots are three inches high the p fe) THE BOOK OF USEFUL PLANTS bed is flooded daily to saturate the ground, then the water is allowed to drain off. When the plants reach six inches in height they are transplanted into the mud of the field, thirty times the size of the seed bed. The work is done very rapidly, oftenest by women, the plants being set at a distance of six inches apart in rows about eight inches apart.

The plants are kept under water until they are about fifteen inches high. Then they are drained and weeded, or hoed. The water is then let in again, and remains until the harvest is almost due. The heads droop with the weight of the kernels, and if they ripen before being gathered, much grain is lost.

The harvester goes to his work with a reaping hook in his hand, lays the handfuls on the stubble to dry. Later the grain is threshed by the slow and wasteful method of treading it out by driving oxen over the straw, spread on a smooth piece of ground, or on a barn floor. Men tread it out often. Much is lost and damaged by this clumsy method.

Sometimes handfuls of straw are whipped over a sharp stone, or drawn through narrow slits, to comb off the kernels. This is slow, but it saves the rice in good condition. In its snug yellow

.

BREAD PLANTS II husks the grain is called “paddy.” It is ready for the milling process, or to be stored for months, or shipped to near or distant markets.

There are various simple methods of pounding the paddy to get the hull off of the white grain. Stone mortars and pestles are used in different countries, and a vast amount of muscular energy expended in pounding large or small quantities, until all the hulls are off. The Chinese family has a daily job of pounding just enough paddy for the day’s use. Children often do this work, using mallets of wood.

Then comes the winnowing process. The grain is lifted high and poured out of shovel-like baskets. The heavy grain drops to the ground. The light chaff drifts away a little distance as it falls,

It is easy to find rice imported from Japan in any large city market. It comes in bags woven of rice straw, that resembles tea matting.

Rice is deficient in oils and proteid matter, but rich in starch. It needs eggs or meat to make a balanced diet for us. That is because we are not vegetarians, as the average oriental is. He thrives on rice, with beans to supply the elements we get from meat. But he eats the whole rice, and so gets the richest part of the grain, which

American rice mills sacrifice in order to get a white, polished grain.

In the American mills, rice is first received as paddy from the threshing. It is cleaned of weed seed, then hulled, then winnowed, then ground to remove the bran, and rubbed between sheepskin buffers to polish the grain. Now the sifting process takes out the broken grains and the starchy dust, and the grain is graded for market.

Our rice is white, but tasteless when cooked. ‘Brown rice” is rich in flavor, and has a creamy color. Those who taste rice in Japan, or cooked in the Japanese way here, do not wonder that the little brown men were able to defeat men and armies much larger than their own, and to keep well and strong on a diet of rice.

Some American grocers carry a limited quantity of “brown rice,” the paddy with hulls removed.

Fermented rice is the basis of the national beverage, called saké, which the Japanese drink hot out of tiny porcelain cups at the beginning of a meal. At weddings a good deal of saké is drunk, and as it contains a high percentage of alcohol, the people may become intoxicated. The Chinese and the natives of different East

Indian islands have their own beverages made of fermented rice.

Europe imports great quantities of rice for food, and for the manufacture of starch. Calicoes are stiffened with a paste of rice powder. Broken

Tice, the dust from rice mills, and the straw and hulls all make good food for cattle. The straw is used in making bags, hats, shoes, and other wearing apparel. Plowed under, the stubble enriches the soil.

Not only is rice the greatest grain crop of the world; it is one of the most beautiful of cereals as it grows on hillsides in Japan. The brooks that flow down the mountainsides are tapped by side channels that lead the water onto wonderful flat terraces, all planted to rice. Step by step the water trickles down, each little patch watered, and giving the water again to the level next below it. Constantly the supply is renewed from above. The trees form. lovely frames for the pictures as the grain turns from green to gold, and the widening brook finally pours its waters into the marsh that is a broad, level sea of rice, ready for the sickle. In September the golden ricelands are as beautiful as the orchards and gardens that burst into bloom in cherry blossom time, the month of

May.

14 THE POOK OF USEFUL PLANTS

WHEAT

Let us look first at a single grain of wheat, out of the bagful the farmer is about to sow, or the miller is about to pour into the hopper, to grind into flour. It is an oval body with a deep crease running lengthwise on one side, a tuft of fine hairs at the tip, and the chit, or embryo, at the base, and directly opposite to the groove. From this chit the wheat plant rises. Stored under the protecting coats of the grain are the food elements that are to nourish the little plant until its own leaves and roots are able to support it independently. The baby plant and its lunch basket are wrapped up in the grain we are looking at.

Without a microscope it will be difficult for us to make out the various coats that wrap the store of starch that forms 93 per cent. of the kernel’s bulk. Six per cent. of it is the embryo, with its shield that protects and absorbs food for the minute plantlet, whose root and stem are visible when the grain is soaked. The seed wrappings form the remaining I per cent. of the whole.

A thin skin, the epidermis, covers the grain. Four coats under the skin compose the bran, the third from the outside being the coloring matter which gives the brown tinge to whole wheat flour.

BREAD PLANTS I5

Under the bran layers is a layer of gluten, that envelops the central body of starch and the chit, and weighs 8 per cent. of the grain. This is the part that is sticky; because of its presence in wheat flour we are able to have spongy bread, “‘risen”’ with yeast.

“Light” bread that is also white bread, 1s so commonly used by nations of the highest civilization that an American must travel widely in order to realize that in many countries it is a luxury enjoyed by few. Other grains form the staff of life, and bread is not white. One of the distinctions of the United States is the fact that it raises more wheat than any other country, and the poorest families eat white bread as regularly as their rich neighbors.

WHEAT FARMING

The farmer sows his wheat broadcast, by hand, if he is old-fashioned and skilful, and has a small field; otherwise with some kind of drill, or seeder, that plants a large area more evenly and more quickly that can be done by hand. The ground must be a deep, well-drained, rich, clay loam, mellow and free from weeds, if a good crop is to follow. Next to the sowing comes the harrowing, unless the seeding is done by a press drill, that puts the grains underground at least an inch. The harrow kills weeds, breaks up the surface crust and covers the seed. The newest tool, the press drill, does all these operations at once: seeding, covering, and smoothing the bare ground over the seed.

If weather is fair and warm, the wheat field shows its green spears at the end of the second week after sowing. Soon the bare ground has turned green as a lawn. One long leaf at each joint of the stem is the rule with the wheat plant, and that leaf in two sections: the lower half clasps the stalk; the upper half extends outward, exposing its flat surface to the sun. This is the part that waves in the breezes. Many people would overlook the tubular part that strengthens the stalk, and only serves its leaf function by exposing the green under surface to the sun. When wind lashes the standing grain the leaves swing around without breaking, because the basal half of each is tough-fibred and takes a spiral twist around the stem. ‘This saves the leaves in many a storm from being whipped off.

The swollen joints, too, save the wheat that gets “lodged” by wind. Strangely enough, the swelling of the base of the leaf-sheath on the side

Pe Yi inte MOL he 77 vt Honduras and Carolina varie- Kiushiu rice has short kernels ties of rice have long that do not break badly in

kernels milling ean oe OA BD 2h’

Rarely does a field of oats stand as high as the farmer

Fine barley grows in these irrigated mountain valleys that has bent over lifts the stem toward the erect position. All the leaf bases help, and the plant soon stands vertical again. These bases remain soft even when the leaf is getting yellow. The effort to lift fallen grain is not so successful, after the stalks are ripe.

One of the peculiar habits of the wheat plant is “tillering.” The stem that first comes up from each grain of seed that sprouts is quickly joined by shoots that rise from joints underground.

Three main roots strike downward from the chit as the plumule, or stem, shoots upward toward the light. But the “crown” of the wheat plant is higher than the seed, which is not lifted up in sprouting, as beans are. A group of much stronger roots strike down from the first joints of the parent stem, and the “tillers,” or secondary stems, rise around their parent, forming a “stool.” The thinner the sowing, the better chance for these side shoots to multiply; and the deeper the grain is planted, the more joints of the original stem will be covered with soil and able to ‘“‘stool,” sending roots down and stems up. .

The best wheat plant is the one with the greatest number of strong stalks. In the average field the number of stalks from a single seed is from six to twelve. Exceptional plants have three to four dozen stalks. The plants from feeble seed may have but two or three feeble stalks. So the farmer who sows poor seed is wasting time and labor.

When the wheat stalks are full-grown they blossom in long spikes or heads, made up of “‘spikelets” (side branches), each with a few flowers, and enclosed in papery coverings, called outer glumes. These glumes are set alternately upon the stem. Each pair of glumes opens at flowering time, exposing one to four pairs of smaller, more delicate glumes each one a wheat blossom in the bud. The smaller glume is the palet; it lies next to the stem. The larger one may have a long, rough spine that protrudes an inch or more. Such wheat is a “bearded” variety. Between the palet and this outer flowering glume is the ovary, containing the plump ovule, with two plume-like branches of the stigma held above it. On the sides stand the three stamens, that hang out their large anthers on slender filaments when the glumes part for the

wind to do its work of carrying pollen from opening anthers to waiting stigmas. To some extent, wheat flowers are pollenated within the bud. But the wind does the cross-pollenating, which makes more vigorous, larger grains than self-pollenation.

A “head” of wheat, three or four inches long, may have fifteen to twenty spikelets filled out, and a few that failed and dried away. Each spikelet had from one to four flowers; so two or three grains of wheat may be the average in each spikelet. Counting them all, the head may yield thirty to fifty grains of wheat. Now count the heads borne by the single plant, and how many grains are the harvest of a single seed sowed? Three or four hundred grains are possible, but not usual.

Five pecks to an acre is the average amount of wheat sown in the United States. ‘In ten years, one grain of North Dakota wheat produced 300,000 bushels.” The average yield per acre in the United States is about thirteen bushels. In the Northwest, sixty and seventy bushels an acre are not uncommon. A thousand-acre field that yielded 51,000 bushels holds the record for a field of that size. Germany and England average more than twice the yield of American wheat fields. Older fields, but better tillage and more fertilizers put upon the land, make the difference. Better farming is increasing the yield of crops, but wheat farming has been one of the worst robbers of the virgin soil of our country.

20 THE BOOK OF USEFUL PLANTS THE WHEAT HARVEST

When wheat begins to turn yellow, the time of harvest is near. The farmer dents a kernel with his thumb nail. If it does not burst, it is ready for the sickle. The best flour is made from wheat that is dead ripe when harvested. But it is not possible to get a large field cut at just the best time. So it is usual to begin the reaping before the grain is quite ripe, trusting to the after care to offset the disadvantages of cutting it under-ripe. If overripe the standing grain is attacked by birds, the wind breaks the brittle stalks, and shells out the loose grain. Rainy weather fades the color of the kernels and sets them to sprouting. A few days’ delay at harvest time may lose the farmer half the value of his entire wheat crop. In regions of little or no summer rain, the harvest hurry is not so great.

The first harvesting tool was the hand sickle, some form of knife that gathered and cut off a bundle of straws as they grew. Before the sickle was invented, the wheat was pulled up in handfuls as flax is pulled to-day. After the sickle came scythes, and then the “cradle,” swung by both hands, and followed by a man who bound the grain. Expert cradlers cut three and four acres of wheat a day. Then came a procession of improved machinery aimed to replace human muscle with some other power, used by a machine that ‘does its work quicker and better than the man with the cradle.

Headers pushed through the grain, stripping the heads by means of a coarse comb set on the edge of a cart, were used in Gaul at the beginning of the Christian Era. The power was furnished by an ox hitched between shafts at the back of the cart. ‘The driver raked the heads off of the knives into the cart. This machine was in use for centuries. Then it was abandoned and forgotten for centuries more.

The publishing of an account of this machine, described by Pliny in 70 A. D., led to the invention of the reaper with revolving reel; and finally came the combined reaper and harvester, based on the principles first employed in the crude Gallic header. Gradually the inventive genius of this country has improved the machinery devised in England until now the wheat on the great farms is cut, threshed, and flung on the ground in tiers of sacks, ready for shipment, the grain not having been handled by men during the whole process.

One of these great “portable factories,”

used in California wheat fields, cuts a forty foot swath, is drawn by a traction engine, and its day’s work is to cut, thresh, and sack the wheat from 120 acres. It takes eight men to operate this combination harvester, at a cost of but thirty to fifty cents per acre. Since the price is about $7,500, these big harvesting outfits belong to wheat-raising on a mammoth scale.

The self-binder, drawn by several horses driven by one man, is seen harvesting small wheat fields. It is followed by helpers who shock the grain, to dry it before it is stacked. ‘Threshing comes later, and the grain may wait for months before it leaves the granary for the mills.

The harvest of wheat in our own country has been described above. America is by no means the only wheat-growing country, though it is ahead of all others in the world. Russia is its greatest rival. The smaller countries of Europe all grow wheat, many of them more than they need for home markets. India, Siberia, North and South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay are all wheat-growing countries. Most of the wheat is raised in the northern hemisphere, and much is shipped thither from the southern wheat regions. Canada is becoming one of the greatest wheat countries of the world.

BREAD PLANTS 23 THE KINDS OF WHEAT

Between two and three hundred varieties of wheat were selected from a thousand varieties tested by the United States Department of Agriculture, as best adapted to conditions in different parts of this country. ‘The vast number of Varieties grown the world over prove that wheat is one of the oldest plants in cultivation. History tells the same thing. In the accounts of the childhood of many nations, the growing of wheat is fully dwelt upon, and the making of white bread from the ground grain.

The Lake-dwellers, of the early Stone Age, left behind them in their strange, prehistoric habitations, grains of wheat half the size of modern varieties. Researches have found four different species represented by the stores uncovered in Switzerland.

Wheat was the staple crop of the ancients in Egypt and Palestine. ‘The Chinese raised it for more than three thousand years. No wonder that the botanists have given up hope of finding the wild species from which the cultivated forms have sprung. In all probability, it is no longer growing wild anywhere. However, it is believed that the original home of the wild wheat was in the valley of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, and from thence it spread in all directions, and has become the principal food plant of civilized nations.

Four distinct species of wheat are recognized as parents of the cultivated varieties: 1. Common wheat (Triticum vulgare) bearded and beardless, white and red, winter and spring — an ancient type. 2. Poulard wheat (T. turgidum) called Egyptian wheat, and ‘“‘wheat of miracle,” because its spikes break into fruitful branches. Not an old type. 3. Hard wheat (T. durum) probably derived from common wheat. 4. Polish wheat (7. polonicum) the German gummer, a large plant, with small heads, much grown in Spain.

Related to wheat proper are the spelts, onegrained species, with a husk around each kernel, and the two-grained, or starch wheat, called emmer. ‘These are comparatively primitive and unimportant grains.

How does a variety originate? This is one way. Mr. Abraham Fultz was walking though his wheat field one day, and he happened to see a plant that bore three heads of beardless wheat, in a field that was bearded. He gathered the heads, which’ were large, and the kernels good. He planted them the next year, and the plants produced were so fruitful that he decided to save all the grain, and grow it for a number of years. In a surprisingly short time he has “fixed” the characteristics of a fine new variety. He distributed seed and now the “Fultz wheat” is the leading soft winter wheat in this country, and is established in many foreign countries. It originated in 1862.

Another way of originating a variety is to choose only the best seed for planting, and only the best again out of each planting of the selected seeds. Gradually the plants improve in size and quality and an improved variety is achieved, whose yield is several bushels per acre better than before the selection of seed was started.