Yarrow (Achillea Millefolium).

Te Aroha News, Volume V, Issue 219, 10 September 1887, Page 4

Yarrow (Achillea Millefolium).

A writer in Otayo Witness has the following on this field plant : — Yorkshire fog is generally considered a worthless grass, and is not recognised as a constituent of a mixture of pasture grass, but bad as it may be I think ifc is to be preferred to the grass called yarrow, or Achillea millefolium.^This grass is frequently found in old natural pastures at Homo, and is said to be valuable for its bitter saline or tonic properties which render pastures more salubrious for the digestive functions of cattle. A small quantity of it may be beneficial when mixed with a large number of nutritious grasses in a rich red pasture, but in this colony it is usually seen in tufts and isolated patches forming a thick mossy mat to the exclusion of all other grasses. So far as my observation goes stock do not appear to care for it at all, as they will eat the grass around the patch of yarrow quite bare, and leave a good long bite on the yarrow. Its roots are as dense and as tenacious as sorrel, and when ploughed the land is so full of it that the furrow is as tough as if it were full of -couch grass, and it is difficult to turn the furrow slice. No white crop docs well after ifc, and it takes several ploughing^ to disintegrate the soil — so tightly is it bound up liy the grass and its fibrous roots. Cocksfoot i» nothing to it. I would not sow a pound

of yarrow seed on any account. It is wonderful how it spreads and increases without assistance. It is very prolific in seeding, and the seed is very small and not liohfc enough for the wind to carry it, but it may be floated upon the water when the creeks are Hooded, and in tins way one may get it gratis fiom a neighbour who may have been foolish enough to have sown it. It is stated in an English work on grasses, that a few ounces of yarrow per acre is sufficient, when mixed with other grasses, in bowing a moist, rich bottom. In rich land the other grasses may keep the yarrow in its place, but I find that it thrives .so well on poor land that a single root will gradually extend and spread itself until it covers several square yards and forms such a mat that nothing elbe can possibly live among it. I have ne\er .seen it growing on nc.i or even good land. It seems to preier interior soils.