VALUE OF RICE GRASS

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 604, 5 March 1929, Page 15

VALUE OF RICE GRASS

MAKING OF NEW LANDS There may be a day, not far off, when stock feeders will include homegrown rice grass in their ration schemes, comments a British agricul- ' -.al. Officially called cord or rice grass, it is a tall grass that inhabits maritime muds. It was first recorded in England on the Southampton salt marshes, near Hythe, in IS7O. Since then it has continually spread into all the waters of Southampton and the Ise of Wight, along the Solent, westward to Poole Harbour and eastward to Chichester and Rye. It is a robust, tall-growing, lather rigid grass, raising its haulms 2ft Gin above the mud, with creeping rhizomes just below the surface. It is spread by the tides carrying either seeds or fragments of runners. These grow into tufts, and the tufts expand, I ultimately converting a mud flat into a spartina meadow. Its immediate benefits are as an j active reclaimer of muddy foreshores, j and in time it will doubtless be in j general use as paving the way for j making new land. It also protects banks and seawalls from scour and erosion by raising and holding the mud in front. To the farmer not interested in the foreshore, chief interest lies in its possibilities as a feed for stock. In the spartina areas farm animals eat the grass greedily, even going down to the meadows to graze as the tide runs off. Experiments are being carried out in this direction at Chelmsford, where they have had the happy inspiration that the grass might be the very plant for which the Essex marshes have been waiting. Much has to be done yet, however, for we are at the very beginning of its exploitation as a fodder grass. But, as Mr. Oliver remarks, some future Bift'en, by intercrossing and selection, should be in a position to offer farmers strains of spartina suited to different requirements.