America's Crop Heritage


ment sent to Jamaica in 1903, purchased a collection of cassavas
there including many varieties high in starch content. These
were tested and grown for use as stock feed. Many new tropical
yams and dasheens were introduced in 1920. The Department
made 1,600 distributions of dasheens in the South that same
year. They were considered as a possible cheap substitute for
potatoes, and with promotion by the Department are still grown
to some extent in the southern states.
 Bamboo-The many uses of bamboos in the Far East suggested
to the explorers, especially Fairchild, that these might be grown
in the southern and western United States. An agent in Japan in
1908 returned several thousand plants, including types grown
for edible shoots. Of 3,000 bamboo plants of hardy timber kinds
imported in 1909, a large number were planted at the Chico
Introduction Garden in California. Successful growths in 1916
showed that United States growers could produce canes com-
parable to those grown in the Far East. In these tests a ten-acre
planting of bamboos was made at Brooksville, Florida, and a
smaller planting made at Avery Island, Louisiana. In 1919 two
more edible types were secured for experiment.
 Investigations in the production of rubber in the United States
have been concentrated on the use of native wild plants, but
in 1927 two kinds of African rubber-producing trees and two
ornamental rubber-producing vines from Madagascar were
planted in Florida for trial.

 MISCELLANEOUS INTRODUCTIONS
 Thousands of fruit introductions suitable to temperate and
northerly climates have been made by the Office of Seed and
Plant Introduction. Only a few specific collections can be
named, but many of the items brought in for use by breeders
and experimenters contributed desirable qualities to the familiar
fruits. The prune industry in the Pacific Northwest is indebted
to an agent sent to France whose studies of the prune industry
there led to the importation of several worthy varieties. Peaches,
apricots, and cherries were secured from Mexico in 1903 by
Onderdonk.
 Over a hundred varieties of French phylloxera-resistant grape-
vines were secured in 1904 for trial in the infected vineyards of
California, and a number of resistant South African grapevines
were sent in by Lathrop. In 1904 two hundred hardy Vladimir


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