536 EXPERIMENT STATION" EECOED. 



apart. The shade furnished by these trees was thin and the nodule growth on 

 the roots very heavy, but the pineapples were almost a complete failure. They 

 suffered most during the dry months. The conclusion reached as to growing 

 pineapples with leguminous crops is that clean culture is necessary for the best 

 development of the pineapples. 



Report of the assistant horticulturist, T. B. McClelland {Porto Rico Sta. 

 Rpt. 1914, PP- 23-26, pi. 1). — ^A progress report on the station's work with 

 coffee, cacao, vanilla, and some miscellaneous plants (E. S. R., 31, p. 637). 



Some of the varieties of foreign coffee being tested came into bearing much 

 later than Porto Rican coffee. Some produced a larger and others a smaller 

 bean, and some are of excellent quality and others inferior. As to vigorous 

 growth and amount of yield the Columnaris coffee, a sport from the ordinary 

 Arabian type discovered in Java less than 30 years ago, is the most pi-omising 

 of the foreign coffees which have been tested on any scale and which have 

 come into bearing up to the present time. The coffee fertilizer experiments do 

 not show as yet that fertilizer can be applied with a financial gain. It seems 

 quite probable that coffee should be included among the acid-tolerant plants, as 

 benefits from lime alone applied to the acid soils at the station have been 

 doubtful. Some of the handsomest coffee trees in the station plantings are in 

 soil which is so acid as to require 1.0527 gm. of sodium hydroxid for neutraliza- 

 tion of 1 kg, of soil. Considerable damage to coffee by rats is reported from 

 various sections of the coffee district. From a young coffee tree with some 

 limbs bearing variegated foliage and others normally green leaves seeds were 

 planted to watch the inheritance of variegation. Of 30 seedlings from limbs 

 with variegated foliage 17 had variegated cotyledonous leaves and two more 

 were slightly off color, while of 36 seedlings from limbs bearing normally 

 colored leaves none were variegated. 



The yield of the 11-year-old cacao planting has shown an increase of nearly 

 a third over that from the preceding year, and more than two and one-half 

 times as great as the crop of three years ago. The most productive tree yielded 

 the equivalent of about 4 lbs. of dried beans, worth 14 cts. a pound. The 

 experiments with vanilla are being continued satisfactorily, some of the species 

 being considered now worth cultivating as ornamentals in addition to their 

 economic value. 



Monthly tappings of rubber are being continued but the yields are so small 

 as to discourage any planting. The cost of tapping and collecting alone has 

 exceeded the value of the product. Among the economic plants obtained in 

 Venezuela in 1913 are a black bean which has proved to be very vigorous and 

 prolific and a delicious table corn, called " Cariaco " which has shown itself 

 fairly well adapted to some local soils. Seedlings of mahogany, Swietenia 

 macrophylla, have made exceedingly rapid and vigorous growth. Woi'k with 

 vegetables from seed brought from the North and grown in Porto Rico from 

 one to many generations has been continued. Above everything else the 

 marked effect of the planting season has stood out clearly. The existence of a 

 tropical climate does not mean the ability to disregard the seasons. 



[Floral and vegetable trials at Wisley in 1914], C. C. Titchmarsh (Jour. 

 Roy. Hort. Sac, 40 {1915), No. 3, pp. 499-541, 544-54&, 552-562, pis. 2).— This 

 comprises reports on variety tests of China asters, early flowering chry.sauthe- 

 mums, helianthus, heleniums, rudbeckias, French beans, and melons, tested 

 under the direction of the Royal Horticultural Society in the Wisley gardens 

 in 1914. 



[Miscellaneous floral and vegetable trials at Wisley, 1914] {Jour. Roy. 

 Hort. Soc, 40 {1915), No. 3, pp. 549-551, 563-555).— Notes similar to the above 

 on a number of miscellaneous flowers and vegetables tested iii Wisley in 1914. 



