Bob Sanders: Making use of serecia lespedza

I get a delightful little magazine called “Alabama’s Treasured Forests.”
My land doesn’t meet the requirements to be called “treasured,” but I liked it, and enjoy reading about how I should treat it, even if I don’t heed the advice.

It tells me that my trees, mostly sweet gum and blackgum, are not worth much. Thanks a lot, “Treasured Forests.”

The back page of each issue is devoted to a certain Alabama plant, different one each time, usually a tree. But this time it’s about lespedza. I know a little about one if its varieties, sericea. The magazine says, “Sericea lespedza, once thought beneficial, offers essentially no wildlife value except cover. It will help stabilize soil when erosion is a problem ...”

It was one of those wonder plants, like kudzu and crotaleria, that would generally make the world a better place. Daddy bought into it.

We had a couple of fields where we grew sericea lespedeza. We grew it for hay. Not good.

In the first place, if you didn’t rake it and haul it in within five minutes of its optimum time, all the leaves would fall off, leaving a barn loft full of stems.

The mules and cows didn’t like it at its best, and would eat it only to prevent absolute starvation. But Daddy was stubborn.

It was supposed to be good for something, so, by George, we’d make ‘em like it. He even tried an “improved” variety. Same results.

We’re now told that even songbirds and turkeys don’t like the seeds.

Another of those things that seemed like a good idea at the time.

I also get stuff about Champion Trees.

A Champion tree is the largest of its kind in the state. I know where one is, the Champion Cedars of Lebanon tree is just east of Maddox Motor Company in Sulligent. I’ve taken pictures.

Lovely tree.

Now, if anybody’s out there looking, I suggest you check the post oak at cousin Bailey’s house.

Huge thing, very likely a champion. You know the place, close to the baptizing hole on Little Yellow Creek. I’ll be glad to give you specific directions.

And speaking of cousin Bailey, you know those idiots in Spain who run in front of a herd of scared, half-crazed killer bulls with saber-like horns?

This is supposed to be fun? They don’t have enough wine to make me do that. If that turns them on, I wish I could have seen them in the pasture with cousin Bailey’s Jersey bull.

That’s the bull we took our milk cows to when they got romancy.

He was all business at that time, but it was always good to remember that a Jersey bull has been called the most dangerous animal alive, tame or wild.

Bad attitude problem.

Y’all sure you want to run with that bull?

Bob Sanders is a longtime radio personality with WAUD in Auburn and writes a weekly column for the Opelika-Auburn News.