286 State Horticultural Society, 



our people do, you would make a trade for fifty barrels of apples a 

 day right here in Boonville. 



THE NUTRITION OF PLANTS FROM THE STANDPOINT OF 



THE ORCHARDIST. 



(By B. M. Diiggar, Professor Botany, University of Missoui-i, Oolunibiii, Mo.) 



When this title was suggested to the Secretary of your Society, 

 I was unaware that an extensive paper upon orchard feeding had 

 been presented by the Dean of the Agricultural College at a meeting 

 of your Society last year. However, the subject of plant nutrition, 

 or the feeding of plants, is one which might well receive annual 

 attention at your meetings. It is fundamentally important to 

 every grower of plants. 



The subject is one which may be approached from many dif- 

 ferent directions, and for that reason a number of papers might be 

 simultaneously devoted to the discussion of this matter without 

 covering the same ground to any marked extent. 



I wish to deal with the general matter of the nutrition of or- 

 chard plants from three general points of view: First, I will 

 neglect to be practical, and after an enumeration of the soil nutri- 

 ents, I wish to emphasize the general physiological importance of 

 these soil nutrients, and to call particular attention to some special 

 functions of these in the plant organism ; secondly, the amounts 

 of the various nutrients which are annually removed from the soil 

 may be considered, with reference to the amounts which may be 

 furnished by ordinary soils, as well as to that which should be sup- 

 plied from year to year; thirdly, we may well devote some time 

 to the important matter of the general sources of the important 

 nutrients, together with the relation of the amounts of these plant 

 foods, one to another, in the soil, as affecting their use by the 

 plant. 



The nutrients — Your attention has, I know, been called time 

 and again to this fact: Plants require more food elements than 

 are ordinarily supplied in the form of complete chemical fertilizers ; 

 but if these necessary elements of plant nutrition not contained in 

 chemical fertilizers are present in all soils to a considerable ex- 

 tent, and are used by the plants in only small quantities, they 

 might be left out of a purely economic consideration, unless they 

 should become important by virtue of their relations to some other 

 elements in the soil. The most important soil nutrients are com- 

 pounds of nitrogen, of phosphoric acid and of potash; but these 

 are not all, for lime and magnesia are indispensable, likewise iron 



