INVENTORY OF SEEDS AND PLANTS IMPORTED BY 

 TKE OFFICE OF FOREIGN SEED AND PLANT INTRO- 

 DUCTION DURING THE PERIOD FROM APRIL 1 TO 

 JUNE :!(), 1919 (NO. 59; NOS. 47:349 TO 418(;4). 



INTRODUCTOBY STATEMENT. 



The peculiar character of these inventories can not be emphasized 

 too often. They are not catalogues of plants now growing in ar- 

 boreta or botanical gardens. They do not represent a resem'oir of 

 living plant material kept in stock for the experimenters of the 

 country, for it would be quite impossible to maintain such a thing 

 except at tremendous expense. The inventories are, however, at- 

 tempts to record for future use the characteristics of a stream of pUmt 

 immigrants which is pouring into America through the activities of 

 this office. They show Avhat the plants are botanically, where they 

 come from, the name of the person who starts each one of them to- 

 ward this country, and what the sender and, to some extent, what the 

 printed literature has to say about each of these plants. 



The agriculture of America in the next century will diverge widely 

 from what it is to-day, just as to-day it is something vastly different 

 from its condition when the Indians hunted over the country. Some 

 of the beginnings of the changes that are coming will find their first 

 record in these plant inventories. Even now it will be found that the 

 date oases of California and Arizona, the durum-wheat areas of the 

 Great Plains region, the feterita -sorghum areas and the Sudan grass 

 fields of the West, the dasheen patches of the South, the Zante cur- 

 rant vineyards of California, the timber-bamboo groves of Louisiana, 

 the rice fields of California and Texas, if their history is traced, had 

 their besinnines in part or wholly in these inventories, for the first 



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notices of the arrival on American shores of the plants Avhuh have 

 made them possible were printed here. Many interesting new plants 

 make their first appearance with us in this fifty-ninth inventory. 



The fact that many hardy palms thrive and bear well on the high 

 pinelands of Florida and in southern California makes the intro- 

 duction of a Brazilian species of Butia (No. 47850) with fruits as 

 large as plums and having a pineapple flavor a matter worthy of un- 

 usual attention bv Florida and California amateurs. 



