Recommendations for the Culture of Lespedeza Bicolor

Abstract

agency to test and plant this shrub extensively. Small's Manual of the Southeastern Flora (1933) lists the plant as occurring from Florida to North Carolina along roadsides, waste places and woods. However, not until the late thirties was culture of the plant undertaken on a large scale. In the spring of 1939, 1,283,485 seedlings were set on Soil Conservation Service project areas through CCC camps under its jurisdiction. Production has increased each succeeding year, with over 50 million seedlings grown in the summer of 1950. In recent years, most of the plantings have been made through state PittmanRobertson programs. Over 80 per cent of the stock is distributed to farmers cooperating in soil conservation districts. The balance goes to sportsman groups, private hunting clubs, or is planted on publicly owned land. In early trials with bicolor on farms, the shrubs were used to form a living dam across a gully or were planted on areas so eroded that native plants had difficulty becoming established. A mixture of shrubs frequently was used in these sites with little regard for the ecology of the situation. As a result, most of the plants did not survive beyond the first summer. Methods of establishing and maintaining bicolor reported here have been developed by a study of plantings made since 1942. Most of these were located near Union Springs, Alabama, and Ridgeland, Georgetown and Pineville, South Carolina. Others were studied in various Alabama and South Carolina localities in the Piedmont, Limestone