By DOUG GRAVES
Ohio Correspondent

WILMINGTON, Ohio — Stroll through Dr. Tom Stilwell’s garden and you’ll come across rice, pineapple, papaya and sugarcane. Surprisingly, this professor’s garden plots are located in Wilmington, Ohio, rather than some Polynesian island.

Say hello to the Wilmington College Living Crop Museum – spearheaded by Stillwell, associate professor of agriculture at Wilmington College, and tended by more than 140 students studying agriculture.

“Other colleges may have such a garden, but not to the scale that we do,” he said. “We have 50 species here. Ohio is good for most of these crops, especially rice.”

This living crop museum features cool season grasses, warm season forages, leguminous forages, annual forages, cereal grains, grain legumes, tropical crops and other grains. Among the forage species one will discover timothy, orchardgrass, reed canarygrass, smooth bromegrass, Kentucky bluegrass,  Indiangrass, switchgrass, big bluestem, buffalograss, sideoats grama, chicory, alfalfa, red clover, white clover, crimson clover and others.

Annual forage crops include annual ryegrass, rape, foxtail millet and forage turnip. Grain crops include barley, corn, oats, rice, rye, sorghum, triticale, wheat, chickpea, faba, lentil, peanut, soybean, buckwheat, flax, quinoa, safflower and sunflower.

Visitors are shocked when they find tropical crops such as papaya, pineapple, sugarcane, cotton and crotalaria. Other crops include tobacco and sugar beet. Three types of soybeans and 10 corn hybrids are grown on the premises, as well.

“Because corn is a major crop here in Ohio, we have several plots showing the evolution of commercial corn in the U.S.,” Stilwell said. “We show some of the early varieties of corn, continuing up to this year’s latest hybrid. There is also a demonstration of how inbreds are used to make hybrids.”

There are 74 plots on the grounds, each one measuring 5-by-20-feet. Wilmington College maintains such a variety as a source of materials for classroom use and for crop identification by students. The museum, located adjacent to the college’s horse stables, is frequented by 4-H members, FFA groups and school groups. Each plot is identified by a small sign giving the common English name, Latin name, crop type, variety name, origin, primary uses, planting date and a map showing areas of planting in the United States.

“The basic idea is to give our students experience with crops,” Stilwell said. “It seems obvious to me that people should know (what) rice, pineapple and sugarcane plants look like. I’m just amazed that many people walk through here and think that pineapples grow on trees.”

There are 140 students majoring in agriculture at the college, with many more using the subject as a minor. Education is the top major at Wilmington College, with agriculture a close second.

“Everything we plant here is planted somewhere in the U.S.,” Stilwell said. “We’re not doing any research on these plants at all, just growing the varieties that you see. There are even farmers who frequent this outdoor museum to see what’s growing in the area.”

First to emerge this spring are healthy patches of kura clover. “This clover is normally found in the Black Sea coast of Ukraine, eastern Turkey or northern Iran,” Stilwell said.

“The big difference between this clover and our types of clover is the kura spreads and spreads. Farmers would love to have this on their grounds. The problem is it’s hard to get established. It grows well the first season, but struggles in the second growing season.”

The museum, now in its sixth year, is open to the general public for self-guided tours. Crops are harvested in spring, summer and fall. For more information about this living crop museum, contact Stilwell at 937-382-6661, ext. 66.