ABSTRACT: In the late 1800s, a botanist named N.E. Hansen brought a Siberian alfalfa species to the United States, hoping its capacity to survive extreme cold and drought would benefit farmers in what he reportedly called “my American Siberia”—the northern Great Plains. And as he envisioned, farmers did sow the unusual, yellow flowered alfalfa into their fields, while plant breeders used the new species to
breed winter-hardiness into cultivated, blue-flowered alfalfa...
