30 



HORTICULTURE. 



July 14, 1906 



Importance of Full and Accurate Varietal Descriptions 



Read Before the American Steel Trade Association by W. W. Tracy. 



Without taking your time to excuse 

 the riding of a hobby or any attempts 

 at rhetorical finish. I will present my 

 ideas on the desirability of more accu- 

 rate and complete varietal descriptions 

 of garden vegetables. In Bulletin No. 

 21, Bureau of Plant Industry, Depart- 

 ment of Agriculture, we find that 

 American seedsmen, in 1902, offered 

 for sale seed of 327 varieties of toma- 

 toes, 307 varieties of cabbage, 445 va- 

 rieties of garden beans and proportion- 

 ate numbers of other species. 



Now, it is doubtless true that a pro- 

 portion, though I think it but a small 

 proportion, of these different sorts ex- 

 ists simply as a matter of commercial 

 expediency; by far a greater part of 

 them exist because some one has 

 found that plants of that type were 

 better suited to some set of conditions 

 and requirements than any sort with 

 which he was acquainted. It is prob- 

 able that a better acquaintance with 

 sorts already in cultivation would have 

 prevented the naming of many of these 

 stocks as distinct varieties, but after 

 allowing all possible reduction from 

 these causes there still remains a long 

 list of sorts, each with special adapta- 

 tion to certain conditions and require- 

 ments. Are these adaptations of prac- 

 tical importance? I most unhesitat- 

 ingly answer, yes. In these days of 

 sharp competition, I thing not only 

 occasionally, but usually, the financial 

 success or failure in any attempt to 

 grow vegetables for market depends 

 as much upon the use of a good stock 

 of the sort best suited to the condi- 

 tions as upon any other factor, and 

 this is not mere theory. Let me give 

 a practical illustration of the estima- 

 tion some hard-headed farmers place 

 upon the use of seed bred to an exact 

 type. In a certain section of New Jer- 

 sey the money-making crop is early 

 tomatoes, and they are grown to such 

 an extent that from a radius not ex- 

 ceeding five miles they have shipped 

 as much as 15,000 bushels in one day, 

 and the shipments will often average 

 8,000 bushels for days together. They 

 have tried a great number of sorts, but 

 have settled upon a certain type as 

 that best suited to their needs, and as 

 a rule each farmer selects and saves 

 seeds of that type for his own plant- 

 ing. They occasionally change seed 

 or buy of each other, and the common 

 price for such exchange is fifty cents 

 per ounce, but last winter one of the 

 most successful growers moved to 

 town, and offered his tomato seed, 

 with other things from his farm, at 

 auction. There was nothing at the 

 sale for which there was such lively 

 competition, and the seed was finally 

 sold at $3.00 an ounce. This price was 

 not paid by a seedsman for a novelty 

 or for stock seed but by a farmer for 

 use in growing tomatoes for the mar- 

 ket and for seed of a variety which 

 had been grown in the vicinity for 

 many years. The purchaser had lost 



the seed he himself had saved, and 

 said he would rather pay $5.00 an 

 ounce than run any risk of poor seed. 

 I have been told that some seed of 

 this identical stock was secured and 

 sent to another section of the country 

 and grown in comparison with the 

 sort which growers in that section 

 had found best suited to their condi- 

 tions and methods, and it was pro- 

 nounced a worthless sort, the planter 

 losing heavily because of using it for 

 his crop instead of seed of the sorts 

 which had proven adapted to his con- 

 ditions; this is an indication of the 

 importance of the use of the type 

 adapted to local conditions. I asked 

 a dozen growers in the first named 

 section it they ever bought seed of 

 seedsmen, and they replied, most em- 

 phatically. No. Why? Oh! we can't 

 get that we can rely upon to give us 

 plants of the right sort. To further 

 illustrate conditions as they exist, I 

 would report that last spring I visited 

 another section, where it is said that 

 within five miles from the station 

 there were 8,0(i0 acres in early cab- 

 bage. Experience has demonstrated 

 the exact type of plant wanted for 

 their conditions. It is difficult, if not 

 impossible, to grow cabbage seed in 

 that section, and the growers depend 

 wholly upon seed from seedsmen. 

 They know quite as well as the to- 

 mato growers mentioned the type of 

 plant wanted, and appreciate the im- 

 portance to them of getting seed cer- 

 tain to develop into plants of that 

 type, but they commonly pay but very 

 little, if any, more than current whole- 

 sale price for the seed they use, and 

 the price is a very important if not 

 the sole factor in determining which 

 of a number of reputable seedsmen 

 get the order. Picking out 100 plants 

 which adhere no more closely to the 

 desired type than I know it is perfect- 

 ly possible to secure from the most 

 carefully grown cabbage seed and 

 which were far less uniform in type 

 than were the tomato plants in most 

 of the fields in the section referred to, 

 I asked the grower what he would 

 agree to pay for seed which produces 

 plants as uniform as those? He re- 

 plied that if by paying ten times — yes, 

 twenty times — what he paid now, he 

 could get seed which he knew was as 

 uniform as that, he would buy enough 

 for five years and pay cash for it. To 

 the inquiry as to whether he could 

 not get such seed of seedsmen if he 

 was willing to pay for it, he said, em- 

 phatically. No, and repeated several 

 instances where seed for which he 

 paid reputable seedsmen a high price, 

 because of its supposed superior qual- 

 ity, proved very little , if any. more 

 uniform than the lower priced seed, 

 and said that one of the best lots of 

 seed he ever had was sold him at so 

 low a price that he was afraid to plant 

 his whole acreage with it until it had 

 been tested. I could give many similar 

 illustrations of the fact that whatever 

 may be the case with the ordinary 

 farmer, experienced growers recog- 

 nized the value of close adherence to 

 well defined type and are willing to 

 pay for it. How is it with the seed 

 growers and dealers? I have been told 

 by one of our best seed growers that 

 he used the same stock seed to grow 



seed of variety A for one reputable 

 seedsman and seed of variety B for 

 another; another seed grower in the 

 same State said that he used the same 

 stock seed to grow seed of the variety 

 B for one seedsman and of variety C 

 for another, yet both said that variety 

 A and variety C were quite distinct; I 

 saw a third seedsman, who declared 

 that B was quite distinct from either 

 .\ or C. Apparently in seed growing, 

 things w-hich are equal to the same 

 thing are not necessarily equal to each 

 other. In another case, a seed grower 

 received a stock of a new sort to grow 

 for a seedsman, and continued to sup- 

 ply him with that sort for several 

 years. After the second or third year 

 the seedsman reported that his cus- 

 tomers complained that the stock was 

 deteriorating. The grower declared 

 that it could not be, as he had taken 

 especial pains in selecting his stock 

 seed, but upon investigations it was 

 discovered that in his selection he had 

 paid no attention to the qualities 

 which made the sort desirable for cer- 

 tain conditions, but had selected to 

 different qualities, and those which 

 would not be likely to be correlated 

 with the desired one. It is true all 

 these illustrations are of comparative- 

 ly little grown varieties, but do our 

 seed growers agree as to the exact 

 type desirable in the case of even the 

 most important and largely grown 

 sorts? or do our best growers adhere 

 to the same exact type from year to 

 year? The fault is not all with the 

 grower. Often they receive from the 

 seedsmen stock seed of a new sort, but 

 can get no description of the exact 

 type wanted, or after selecting to a 

 certain type for several generations 

 they are asked to select to quite a dif- 

 ferent one. These conditions would 

 result in want of uniformity of type 

 even if each seedsman secured his 

 stock from year to year of but one and 

 the same grower, but he rarely does 

 so, and not only this, but the grower 

 does not always fill orders with the 

 seed grown from his own stock. It is 

 said that there is no need of "sending 

 coales to Newcastle," but it some- 

 times seems necessary to send sweet 

 corn and onion seed from the West to 

 Central Connecticut and to import 

 cabbage seed into Eastern Long 

 Island. 



1 have presented my conception of 

 the conditions as they exist. How 

 may they be improved? With all our 

 modern knowledge of the laws of 

 heredity as expressed in Mendelian 

 and other theories and laws, the truth 

 in the homely adage of "like father 

 like son" remains and the corollary 

 that the greater the number of genera- 

 tions of exact similitude, the more 

 fixed and positive it becomes. It is 

 only by rigid adherence for several 

 generations to an exact type that we 

 can produce seed that will be certain 

 to develop into plants of that type. A 

 variation for a single generation in 

 any one characteristic, though it may 

 be a minor one, may and often will so 

 change the balance of influence of dif- 

 ferent tendencies as to completely 

 change the character of the seed. 

 Often we can only know of an invisible 

 but valuable characteristic by its co- 



