STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 141 



foliage of a good-si/ed, well-branched forest tree is estimated to 

 present about five acres of surface. It is probable that the entire 

 root surface, including that of the root hairs, is fully as great. 

 Strawberries, one year old, on a l)lack. loamy soil, send their main 

 roots down one and a half to two feet. Spring wheat, forty days 

 from the time of sowing, was found to have roots twenty-one inches 

 deep. Fall sown rye had roots, the following May, three and one 

 half feet deep. Blue grass roots, on the campus of the State Uni- 

 versity, have l)een found six feet deep. It is true ver}' few of the 

 roots reached anything like this depth, but there is no mistake about 

 the fact as stated. Clover is notably deep-rooted. These roots have 

 been followed thirteen feet downward. Parsnips sometimes grow- 

 equally deep — not swollen all the way down, but easily traceable by 

 careful digging. It is said upon good authority that the roots of a 

 living tree in India was followed down from the surface sixty-nine 

 feet. 



The lateral extension of roots is even more remarkable. A root, 

 in common garden soil, from a two-year-old grape vine layer was fol- 

 lowed by myself, and taken up entire thirteen feet in length. Apple 

 trees, twenty feet apart, were found to have interlaced roots after 

 eight years from ])lanting. The roots of a Lombardy poplar tree, 

 seventy feet awa}^ were found in abundance in an old wood yard, 

 where they had come nearer the surface than in the intervening 

 space. Willows, fifty feet from wells, have been known to fill the 

 latter with multitudes and masses of roots. An account has been 

 given of a tile drain filled with roots of an elm tree standing four 

 hundrod and fifty feet away. The best citation that can be made 

 upon the enormous development of roots is that of the squash vine, 

 raised for experiment and observation, in the plant-house of the 

 Agricultural College of Massachusetts, recorded in the Twenty- 

 second Report of the Massachusetts State Board of Agriculture. 



This vine was planted July 1st, in a bed of rich compost, four 

 feet wide, six inches deep and fifty feet long. When fully developed 

 holes were bored in the bottom of the trench and the total soil 

 carefully washed away. The entire root system was thus exposed 

 and carefully measured. The nuiin branches reached twelve to 

 fifteen feet, and the total length of roots and branches was found 

 to be over two thousand feet. Besides these were seventy joints of 

 the vine which rooted, each producing, upon an average, twelve 

 Inindred feet of roots and l)ranches. Altogether there were more 

 than eighty thousand feet in length of roots, and of these fifty 

 thousand feet must have been produced at the rate of one thousand 

 feet or more per day! There is no guesswork about this — no hum- 

 buggery or exaggeration. The records are those of actual and faith- 

 ful measurement. Fact is stranger than fiction, and truth more 

 wonderful than fairy tales. 



