FOOD-PRODUCING TREES 



231 



PORTUGUESE CORK FOREST 



The thrifty trees in the background yield a large revenue, while the harvesters 

 in the foreground thrive upon the auxiliary crop of acorns. 



live and make roots and survive an annual cutting even 

 in August. In fact, I have been nearly driven to despair 

 by seeing the way they have survived where I have at- 

 tempted to Idll them by ten consecutive August cuttings. 

 But there is an easier way of keeping them down and yet 

 keeping them alive. Turn in every winter or ever}^ other 

 winter a bunch of goats. 

 They will gladly peel the 

 bark from every locust 

 bush, permitting it to start 

 again which it will cheer- 

 fully do ad infinitum, thus 

 keeping the ground full of 

 nitrogen and humus, fur- 

 nishing nitrogen for some 

 nearby big fruit tree and 

 furnishing winter forage for 

 goats. The fact that these 

 trees arc much beset in some 

 localities by borers will 

 rarely cause their complete 

 extcnnination, but merely 

 make them less of a men- 

 ace to the tree they are 

 intended to feed and not 

 to shade. 



Fortunately we do not 

 have to depend on more 

 self-perpetuating and con- 

 tinuously murdered 

 trees, or even the 

 clovers, to get this 

 leguminous nitro- 

 gen supply. The 

 honey locust tree is 

 one of the most 

 promising of fruit- 

 yielding trees for 

 the reason that it 

 possesses two excel- 

 lent qualities: (1) 

 it is a timber tree 

 of high order; (2) 

 its nitrogenous and 

 also sugary beans 

 are much prized by 

 cattle, and have an 

 analysis value 

 which would give 

 them, in the ground 

 form, a market 

 value approaching 

 that of com, and 

 a nutritive value so high in protein as to make the 

 meal a rival to wheat bran. It is a close duplicate to the 

 carob bean meal of the Mediterranean and of American 

 patent stock foods, and to the mesquite bean meal which 

 is becoming so important in Hawaii. This honey locust, 

 with its good timber and good beans, could therefore be 

 intcrplanted with walnuts, hickories, persimmons, pecans. 



IS THIS A FOREST? , 



This is a view on the Sorrento Peninsula, Italy. Every tree seen in the photograph is a food tree, 

 the foreground are walnuts and in the background olives. 



mulberries, or other non-legumes all of which love the nitro- 

 gen, and thus the land could have two crops and at the 

 same time be bringing forward timber trees of the highest 

 quality. 



The honey locust tree is a heavy yielder of beans. A 

 specimen growing in my neighbor's yard yielded 350 



pounds in 1912, and I have 

 heard of higher records. The 

 tree survives much aridity, 

 grows on the plateaus of 

 western Kansas, Western 

 Colorado, and joins terri- 

 tory with the mesquite, 

 whose nutritious beans have 

 fed cattle, deer, antelope and 

 Indians for centuries. Be- 

 tween the honey locust spe- 

 cies and the mesquite genus 

 we have a good forage bean 

 tree that will grow over at 

 least 2,000,000 square miles 

 of the United States, an un- 

 developed resource of amaz- 

 ing possibility, and one that 

 requires immediate experi- 

 mentation by forest experi- 

 ment stations and farm 

 experiment stations. 



For increase of fruit 

 areas, there is a com- 

 promise method 

 which may appeal 

 to the forester be- 

 cause it gives a 

 crop of wood and at 

 the same time 

 brings us to the pos- 

 sibility of quick, 

 cheap, easy, and 

 effective fruit pro- 

 duction. I have in • 

 mind the habit of 

 the tall slim forest- 

 grown trees which 

 when left in clear- 

 ings throw branches 

 down their erst- 

 while bare trunks 

 and make of them- 

 selves tall cylinders 

 of foliage, affording 

 the maximum possi- 

 ble leaf surface ex- 

 posed to the sunlight, and at the same time a long log in 

 the middle which will at least make second-class lumber, 

 strong. This haljit of feathering their long bare legs is 

 part of the equipment of the chestnut, the walnut, the 

 oak, and probably many other trees, and if the trees did 

 not do it naturally themselves, it could doubtless be 

 induced by a few well-placed strokes of the hatchet. 



In 



