State Agricultural Society. 437 



EVERGREEN TREE CULTURE. 



BY E. P. AIKEN, OF SACRAMENTO. 



Without wishing to deduct one iota from the importance of the imme- 

 diate introduction, wide dissemination, and planting of all deciduous forest 

 trees, I will call the attention of the Club, if you please, to the considera- 

 tion of similar merits of the evergreen and coniferous trees of the forest, 

 and will confine the few remarks I have to make to four or five of the 

 leading and, in my opinion, most valuable sorts for cultivation here. 



The evergreen, we all know, is a tree that has a perpetually green and 

 living foliage. Some varieties have upright, needle like leaves, while 

 others have a broad and drooping foliage. The first mentioned are all 

 of the cone-bearing family or conifers; and this name they get from the 

 form of the fruit, which contains the seed, and not from the general 

 habit of the tree, as some suppose. The seed of this class is the most 

 minute and delicate of all our forest tree seeds, and it is well known 

 that they will not grow in their natural state only under peculiar cir- 

 cumstances and in certain localities, where the atmosphere is humid and 

 to that extent that the seed will not fail to germinate and the seedlings 

 grow readily. The seedlings are found in their natural state only in the 

 depths of the forests, in cool and shady places where the searching- 

 winds and the fierce and scalding rays of the sun cannot penetrate. 

 The first year of their existence they are exceedingly delicate, a strong- 

 ray of sunlight or gust of wind often destroying the vitality of thou- 

 sands. Hence we are taught by nature the uncertainty of successfully 

 growing evergreen trees from seed in our dry climate. It has required 

 years of patient toil by experienced nurserymen, using every precaution 

 known and gathered by long experience, together with the great advan- 

 tage of the humid atmosphere bordering our great lakes, to raise the 

 seedlings successfully. They are now raised in large quantities by parties 

 in the East who make the business a specialty, and can be imported here 

 through the mails at so little cost as to come within the means of all. 



The most extensive growers of forest tree seedlings in the United 

 States are Eobert Douglass & Son, Waukegan, Illinois, and Pinney & 

 Lawrence, Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin. While these evergreen seedlings 

 can be had so cheaply from the Eastern nurserymen, I would not advise 

 our farmers hero to undertake their cultivation from seed, as I am satis- 

 fied that failure and discouragement would be the result. It is a very 

 difficult question to decide which of the two varieties — the evergreen or 

 the deciduous trees — is of the most importance to civilization. 



The tvhole family of evergreens and cone-bearing trees of our forests 

 are valuable for timber, and are used to a greater or less extent aa 



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