The Book of Alfalfa: History, Cultivation and Merits / Its Uses as a Forage and Fertilizer

There appears no record of a time when alfalfa was not in some portions of the world esteemed one of Nature’s most generous benefactions to husbandry and an important feature of a profitable agriculture. Its beginning seems to have been contemporary with that of man, and, as with man, its first habitat was central Asia, where the progenitors of our race knew its capabilities in sustaining all herbivorous animal life, and where, possibly, it too afforded the herbage which sustained Nebuchadnezzar in his humiliating exile, and eventually restored him to sanity and manhood.

It was carried by the Persians into Greece with the invasion by Xerxes in 490 B. C., utilized by the Romans in their conquest of Greece, and carried to Rome in 146 B. C. Pliny and other writers praise it as a forage plant and it has been in cultivation in parts of Italy continuously from its introduction. Some writers are disposed to aver that it was brought to Spain and France by the Roman soldiery under Cæsar and early thereafter, but more probably it was not introduced into those countries until several centuries later. It is known to have been cultivated in Northern Africa about the time it was first brought to Italy; and the name “alfalfa” being Arabic the inference might be reasonable that it was introduced into Spain by the Moors from Northern Africa at the time of their conquest of Spain about 711 A. D., but this is of small consequence to the twentieth century. From Spain it crossed to France, and later to Belgium and England. It was highly spoken of by an English writer of the fifteenth century.

AMERICA INDEBTED TO SPAIN

But in those ages Europe was not so much interested in agriculture as in war. Land tenures were not well fixed and ownerships were uncertain. Spain, however, was to perform at least two important services for half the world, if none for herself. She was to reveal to civilization a new continent, and give to it the most valuable forage plant ever known. And so, in 1519, Cortes, the Spaniard, and his remorseless brigands carried murder, rapine and havoc to Mexico, but gave alfalfa. Less than a score years later Spain also wrote in Peru and Chili some of the bloodiest pages of human history, but left alfalfa there, where it has since luxuriantly flourished. If it was brought to the Atlantic coast of the United States in that century, it was not adopted by the Indian inhabitants, who were not an agricultural people, nor by the early European settlers.

It was not until about 1853 or 1854 that it was introduced into northern California, the legends say from Chili, but it had been grown by the Spaniards and Indians in southern California for probably a hundred years, having had a gradual migration from Mexico. Strange to relate, while it is even now on the Atlantic coast discussed as a new plant, there is good evidence that it has been in cultivation on a small scale in the Carolinas, New York and Pennsylvania for probably one hundred and fifty years. Certainly there are small fields in those states that have been producing for over sixty years, and there are to be found articles and letters written far earlier showing that it was then known and had been proven. One Spurrier, in a book dedicated to Thomas Jefferson, and written in 1793, spoke highly of alfalfa, called “lucerne;” told how it should be cultivated, and that three crops of valuable hay could be cut annually. In the “Transactions of the Society for the Promotion of Agriculture,” published at Albany in 1801, it was favorably mentioned, and in the “Farmers’ Assistant,” printed in Albany in 1815, alfalfa was praised and the statement made of its yielding 6 to 9 tons of hay per acre “under the best cultivation and plentiful manuring.” Yet its cultivation did not spread. The inertia of farmers, or perhaps their indifference to new ideas, in the early days must have been marvelous. According to Spurrier the difficulties were not considered greater than now; he said one planting would survive many years and the yield was three times as great as that of any other forage plant. The seed was no doubt introduced there from England or France; it was probably scarce, and difficult to secure from growings in this country.

THE NAME AND ITS ORIGIN

The name “Alfalfa” is from an Arabic word meaning “the best fodder,” which honor it can certainly still claim. Many writers have assumed that the name “Lucerne” which it bears in France and England, was from the name of the Swiss canton, Lucerne. This is a mistake as it was not known there until long after it was cultivated in France and England. The name is probably from the Spanish word “Userdas” which the French changed to “La-cuzerdo” and later to “Luzerne,” still later to “Lizerne” and then to “Lucerne.”

Among other names by which alfalfa is known are the following: Lucerne; French Lucerne; French Clover, in part; Mexican Clover, in part; Lucerne Clover; Lucerne Medicago; Alfalfa Clover; Chilian Clover; Brazilian Clover; Syrian Clover; Sainfoin, erroneously; Spanish Trefoil; Purple Medick; Manured Medick; Cultivated Medicago; Medick. Persian, Isfist; Greek, Medicai; Latin, Medica, Herba Medica; Italian, Herba Spagna; Spanish, Melga or Meilga, also (from the Arabic), Alfalfa, Alfasafat; French, La Lucerne; German, Lucerne, Common Fodder, Snail Clover, Blue Snail Clover, Branching Clover, Stem Clover, Monthly Clover, Horned Clover, in part, Perennial Clover, Blue Perennial Clover, Burgundy Clover, Welsh Clover, Sicilian Clover.

Alfalfa belongs to the botanical family Leguminosae, or the legumes, of which there are thousands of species, and is thus related to all clovers, peas, vetches and beans. Its botanical name is Medicago sativa. There are some fifty species of the genus Medicago that are known, but alfalfa and one or two others are all that are of practical value as fodders. It is a true perennial plant, smooth, upright, branching, ordinarily growing from one to four feet high, yet in some instances much higher, owing to conditions of soil, climate and cultivation. Its leaves are three parted, each leaflet being broadest about the middle, rounded in outline and slightly toothed toward the apex. The purple pea-like flowers instead of being in a head, as in red clover, are in long, loose clusters or racemes. These are scattered along the plant’s stems and branches, instead of being especially borne, as in red clover, on the extremities of the branches. The matured seed-pods are spirally twisted through two or three complete curves, and each pod contains several seeds. The seeds are kidney-shaped, and average about one-twelfth of an inch long by half as thick. They are about one-half larger than seeds of red clover, and in color are at their best an olive green or a bright egg-yellow, instead of a reddish or mustard yellow, or faded brown. The ends of the seeds are slightly compressed where they are crowded together in the pod.

Alfalfa is very long-lived; fields in Mexico, it is claimed, have been continuously productive without replanting for over two hundred years, and others in France are known to have flourished for more than a century. Its usual life in the United States is probably from ten to twenty-five years, although there is a field in New York that has been mown successively for over sixty years. It is not unlikely that under its normal conditions and with normal care it would well-nigh be, as it is called, everlasting.

ITS WONDERFUL ROOT SYSTEM

In its root growth it is probably the greatest wonder among plants. While it usually grows no higher than four or five feet (although it has been known to reach more than ten feet; an unirrigated stalk is on exhibition at the office of the Kansas Board of Agriculture, measuring nearly seven feet) and its normal height is about three feet, its roots go down ten, twenty, or more feet, and one case in Nevada is reported by Charles W. Irish, chief of Irrigation Inquiry United States Department of Agriculture, where the roots were found penetrating through crevices in the roof of a tunnel one hundred and twenty-nine feet below the surface of an alfalfa field. Prof. W. P. Headden of Colorado found roots nine feet long from alfalfa only nine months old, and another reports roots seventeen inches long of but four weeks’ growth, the plants being but six inches high. It usually has a slender taproot, with many branches tending downward, yet with considerable lateral growth. As the taproot is piercing the earth it is also sending out new fibrous roots, while the upper ones, decaying, are leaving humus and providing innumerable openings for air, the rains, and fertilizing elements from the surface soil. The mechanical effect of this root-growth and decay in the soil constitutes one of the greatest virtues of the plant, and by its roots alfalfa becomes, self-acting, by far the most efficient, deep reaching subsoiler and renovator known to agriculture.

VARIETIES AND PECULIARITIES

There are several other varieties of alfalfa besides Medicago sativa, the most common being the Intermediate Lucerne or Medicago media, the Yellow Lucerne or Medicago foliata and Turkestan alfalfa or Medicago sativa Turkestanica. None of these have such unqualified value as the ordinary alfalfa; in fact the first two are properly regarded as weeds when found with Medicago sativa. In 1898 when there had been reported many failures in the alfalfa districts of the extreme North and the extreme Southwest, the United States Department of Agriculture sent Prof. N. E. Hansen of South Dakota to Russia, especially the cold, arid and semi-arid portions of northern Turkestan, to discover if possible a more hardy strain of alfalfa than that grown in America. He brought back from there several hundred bushels of seed which was distributed to government stations and individual experimenters in forty-seven states and territories. The reports of its behavior varied greatly, some growers being enthusiastically in its favor, while most reported results below or not above the average from other sorts, and some practically a failure. It would appear from the consensus of opinion at this time that the Turkestan alfalfa has not demonstrated in America any such superiority as to justify its general adoption, even in the dry and warm regions of the Southwest, in our colder states, or in Canada.

Among other claims for Turkestan alfalfa by the government officials in charge of its introduction and exploitation have been that “its seed will germinate much quicker and the plants start into growth earlier under the same conditions than common alfalfa. The plants are more leafy, grow more rapidly, and have a stronger, more vigorous root system. Another advantage which the Turkestan variety has is that the stems are more slender and less woody, the plants making a more nutritious hay of finer quality. That it will withstand drought under the same conditions better than ordinary alfalfa seems certain from the reports of the experimenters. In the West and Northwest, at least, it seems to be more productive, both with and without irrigation.”

At the North Dakota station Turkestan alfalfa sown in 1901 yielded in the three years following (1902-3-4) at the average rate of slightly more than two tons per acre annually.

Acclimation of alfalfa is a slow process, and numerous close observers think there are too many radical differences in climate and possibly of soil between Turkestan and New Mexico, or North Dakota, to admit of this variety’s becoming a preeminently valuable acquisition to America. It is thought more reasonable to let the American-grown alfalfa gradually accustom itself, as it will, to any particular region, sowing seed from nearly the same latitude and grown under as nearly as possible the conditions it will encounter in its new environment.

In 1903 the Department of Agriculture began experimenting on a small scale at stations in Arizona, California and the warm regions with alfalfa seed procured by Mr. D. G. Fairchild, from Arabia. The officials in charge observe that the plants from this seed appear to make a much quicker growth after cutting, and as a result of this one more crop in a season than is obtained from other alfalfa may be possible. It differs from other strains in having larger leaflets and in being much more hairy. “It is thought very probable that by careful selection hardiness can be bred into Arabian alfalfa so that it will grow much farther north than it does at present.”

AN OPINION FROM HEADQUARTERS

As a latter day opinion or estimate of alfalfa from an official who is presumed to speak as an authority, without bias and knowing his subject, the words of W. J. Spillman, agrostologist of the United States Department of Agriculture, should carry weight. In an address before the eleventh annual convention of the National Hay Association, at St. Louis, in 1904, Professor Spillman said:

“Alfalfa is the oldest plant known to man; it is the most valuable forage plant ever discovered. It has not been appreciated in the eastern part of the United States until the last five years. We are now growing it successfully in every state in the Union, and I believe it is safe to say in every agricultural county in the United States it is being grown with success. Two weeks ago I secured a picture of a field of alfalfa in South Carolina that was sowed over sixty-nine years ago. It was still in pretty good condition. I know of another field in New York State sowed forty-five years ago, and one in Minnesota that was sowed thirty-three years ago. All over the West there are thousands of fields of alfalfa that were sowed twenty-five years ago that are still yielding large crops. In Wisconsin alfalfa yields three crops of hay a year, and in Texas, four and five large crops. In southern California, below sea-level, where they never have any frost, they cut alfalfa eleven times a year, and in Texas, south of the Rio Grande, they cut it nine times a year.

“Alfalfa does not exhaust the soil. Nitrogen is the soil’s most important element, and the one most liable to give out; the one the farmer is called upon to supply first. Alfalfa does not ask the farmer for nitrogen at all, because it can get its nitrogen out of the atmosphere. Four-fifths of the atmosphere consists of nitrogen. Ordinarily, plants cannot make use of that nitrogen at all; the roots of the alfalfa will leave in the soil eight or ten times as much nitrogen as was there before. The farmer who plants alfalfa, clover or peas does not have to get nitrogen from the fertilizer factories. I know one farmer who for the past eight years has made an average of eight and one-half tons per acre of alfalfa on irrigated land in the state of Washington. I have heard of other men that produced twelve tons an acre in southern Texas on irrigated land. It would hardly be possible to produce that much on land that is not irrigated, because rain does not come to order.

“I have lived ten years in a country where the horses, cattle, sheep, hogs and chickens eat alfalfa hay, or green alfalfa, the year round. It is the richest hay food known. Eleven pounds of it is worth as much for feeding purposes as ten pounds of bran.”

A most pleasing word-picture of alfalfa is that by Geo. L. Clothier, M. S., who has studied his subject closely in the field, the feed lot and the laboratory, and he paints it thus:

“The cultivation and feeding of alfalfa mark the highest development of our modern agriculture. Alfalfa is one of nature’s choicest gifts to man. It is the preserver and the conserver of the homestead. It is peculiarly adapted to a country with a republican government, for it smiles alike on the rich and the poor. It does not fail from old age. It loves the sunshine, converting the sunbeams into gold coin in the pockets of the thrifty husbandman. It is the greatest mortgage lifter yet discovered.

“The alfalfa plant furnishes the protein to construct and repair the brains of statesmen. It builds up the muscles and bones of the war-horse, and gives his rider sinews of iron. Alfalfa makes the hens cackle and the turkeys gobble. It induces the pigs to squeal and grunt with satisfaction. It causes the contented cow to give pailsful of creamy milk, and the Shorthorn and white-faced steers to bawl for the feed rack. Alfalfa softens the disposition of the colt and hardens his bones and muscles. It fattens lambs as no other feed, and promotes a wool clip that is a veritable golden fleece. It compels skim-milk calves to make gains of two pounds per day. It helps the farmer to produce pork at a cent and a half a pound and beef at two cents.

“Alfalfa transforms the upland farm from a sometime waste of gullied clay banks into an undulating meadow fecund with plant-food. It drills for water, working 365 days in the year without any recompense from man. The labor it performs in penetrating the subsoil is enormous. No other agricultural plant leaves the soil in such good physical condition as alfalfa. It prospects beneath the surface of the earth and brings her hidden treasures to the light of day. It takes the earth, air, moisture and sunshine, and transmutes them into nourishing feed stuffs and into tints of green and purple, and into nectar and sweet perfumes, alluring the busy bees to visits of reciprocity, whereon they caress the alfalfa blossoms, which, in their turn, pour out secretions of nectar fit for Jupiter to sip. It forms a partnership with the micro-organisms of the earth by which it is enabled to enrich the soil upon which it feeds. It brings gold into the farmer’s purse by processes more mysterious than the alchemy of old. The farmer with a fifty-acre meadow of alfalfa will have steady, enjoyable employment from June to October; for as soon as he has finished gathering the hay at one end of the field it will be again ready for the mower at the other. The homes surrounded by fields of alfalfa have an esthetic advantage unknown to those where the plant is not grown. The alfalfa meadow is clothed with purple and green and exhales fragrant, balmy odors throughout the growing season to be wafted by the breezes into the adjacent farmhouses.”