Performance of Strains of Lotus corniculatuson the North Pacific Coast 1

W. E. CHAPIN, A. L. HAFENRICHTER, AND A. G. LAW BIRDSFOOT trefoil (Lotus corniculatus L.) has been an important forage crop in certain regions of continental Europe and the British Isles for the last century. Although records of the systematic introduction to the United States of seed lots of Lotus corniculatus date back to 1900 (3), only in recent years has there been much interest in this legume as a cultivated forage plant. At the present time, successful experimental plantings or naturalized growths of birdsfoot trefoil have been reported in nearly all of the northeast United States and in the Pacific Coast area (5). MacDonald (3), after intensive experiments in New York, concluded that "...Birdsfoot trefoil shows enough desirable characteristics to warrant its further investigation and improvement. It is apparent that the crop cannot be expected to compete with such crops as alfalfa or red clover for hay production on the better soils and under a short-rotation system of farming. It does, however, present distinct possibilities for hay and pasture production on the secondary, or poorer, soils where alfalfa is not successful, where red clover is too short-lived for the rotation used, and summer conditions too droughty for the persistence of white clover." Hafenrichter et al. (2) reported the use of Lotus corniculatus in grass-legume mixtures on land capability classes I to IV in western Washington, the associated grass to use depending on the soil condition. On land with a high water table meadow foxtail should be used; on upland soils orchardgrass and tall fescue can be used. They found that the Lotus responds well to phosphate fertilizer on western Washington soils. Chapin reported the results from comparing the yield of birdsfoot trefoil with eight varieties of alfalfa for five successive years at Bellingham, Wash. The best strain of the trefoil produced as much hay as the best