Some of the best known white rice varieties are the Monarch Rice, Snowball and Egyptian. Of the white pearl varieties, the Common White Pearl, Mapledale Prolific and Non pareil are standard varieties. Of the yellow pearl varieties, the most valuable are the Queen Golden and Dwarf Golden, each of which has a yellowish color when popped and has the taste peculiar to yellow corn. The black varieties are grown only in a small way as novelties, and the same may be said of the Golden Tom Thumb, which is a dwarf yellow variety that is so small that it has no value except as a curiosity.
Two typical varieties or groups may be described as follows (Illinois Experiment Station, Bulletin No. 13) : White rice ; Stalk 7 to 8 feet high, rather short-jointed, leafy, dark green ; tassel long, slender, with few branches, drooping ; suckers many, growing to about half the size of the parent stalk ; very few husk blades. Ear 3 to 5 feet from the ground, strongly tapering, dull white, with a white cob 5 to 7 inches long, 1.3 to 1.75 inches in diameter ; cob .65 to .8 inches thick ; kernels rounded over the butt of the ear and usually filling out the tips ; rows of kernels fourteen to twenty, regular pairs of rows not very distinct. Kernel pointed, the tip being continued into a spine which is either depressed or nearly erect, .15 to .2 inches wide, .3 to .35 inches deep. White rice corn was ripe enough to cut in 132 days from planting. A single plot yielded in 1889 at the rate of 86.3 bushels per acre. This differs from Monarch rice in having a shorter ear with a greater number of rows of kernels, and the kernels more slender.
White pearl : Stalk 7 to 8i feet high, rather large ; blades large, dark green ; tassel long, with few branches, drooping ; suckers many, reaching about three-fourths of the size of the parent stalk. Ear 3.5 to 4.5 feet from the ground, nearly cylin drical, clear white, with a white cob 6 to 8 inches long, 1 to 1.4 inches in diameter ; cob .55 to .65 inches through ; kernels even at the butt ; tip usually well filled ; rows of kernels ten to fourteen, regular. Kernel .2 inches broad, .25 inches deep, very smooth, somewhat flattened over the top. One plot of white pearl with 88 per cent of a full stand yielded forty-one pounds of ears, or at the rate of 46.1 bushels per acre. The ears are long, slender and smooth. It differs from the common white in having longer and more slender ears and in making a much smaller growth of stalk. It was ripe enough to cut in 125 days from planting.
Culture.
Soil.—Any well-drained fertile soil, except a low peat or muck soil, is suitable for the growth of popcorn. A muck soil usually has an excess of nitrogen during the warm weather in the latter part of the season, which tends to cause too much growth of stalks at the expense of well-developed ears. This, of course, can be overcome to some
extent by liberal applications of potassic and phos phatic fertilizers, which will furnish the plant a better balanced food-supply ; but since this ten dency to run largely to stalk is general with pop corn under the best conditions of fertility, it is obvious that planting it on muck soil would in crease the fault.
Fertilizers.— Whether the soil is sand, gravel, loam or clay, it must have a sufficient quantity of available plant-food elements to give the best re sults. In furnishing any or all of these, one should remember that they are not needed to grow any specific crop, but rather to overcome deficiencies of available plant-food in that particular type of soil. All of these types of soil are usually lacking in available nitrogen unless well supplied with humus, and it should be supplied in large applica tions of organic matter, either in stable manure or by the use of cover-crops ; and even then there will be a deficiency of available nitrogen early in the season, which should be supplied by a broadcast top-dressing of nitrate of soda, at the rate of one hundred to two hundred pounds per acre. The application is made when the corn is two or three inches high.
For best results, the mineral elements, phosphorus and potassium, should also be applied at the rate of 400 pounds of acid phosphate (14 per cent avail able) and 100 pounds of sulfate of potash (50 per cent actual) per acre ; these to be mixed together and drilled into the soil with the fertilizer drill three or four inches deep before planting.
Seed.—In the growing of popcorn on a commer cial scale, the selection of seed has more to do with success or failure than any other one factor. It is said that a man is the sum of his ancestors, and so is every plant that is propagated by means of a seed. It is not enough that we go through the field when the corn is ripe and select ears for seed from fine, healthy, productive individual stalks ; we mast try to guard against the possible chance that any of the kernels on the ear which we select for seed could have been fertilized with pollen-grains from the tassel of another plant that may be either poorly developed or entirely barren. In other words, we must breed up our seed corn to the special type best suited to our needs, for the same reason that we breed our animals for special purposes ; and the same general principles seem to underlie the process in either case and the results are t-wally satisfactory when intelligently employed.