652 Mr. Spencer U. Pickering [Feb. '21, 



have all, or nearly all, died, and that in their place a new system of 

 rootlets has arisen from the thicker portions of the older roots. 

 [Slide shown.] It is evident, therefore, that it is quite a fallacy to 

 set so much store on a tree being well furnished with fibrous roots, 

 and, still more so, to treat these roots with such care ; the only thing 

 that can be said in favour of wanting a tree with such roots is that 

 a tree which has shown a good root-development in the nursery will 

 probably do so again in the plantation, l)ut nothing can be said in 

 favour of tending the old rootlets so carefully ; in fact, we have found 

 that trees do better if the smaller of the fibrous roots are removed 

 before planting, and also if all the roots are shortened to a certain 

 extent. The reason of this is not only that it is well to remove 

 parts of the tree which are bound to die, but that the new rootlets 

 which form will be more vigorous if they originate from the thicker 

 portions of the old roots, where the store of material for their 

 nourishment is greater. The practice of leaving the roots as long 

 as possible, and carefully trimming their ends, is quite a mistaken 

 one, for the ends of these roots, having lost the root-tip, cannot 

 start into growth again, and it has been found that of the new 

 rootlets which originate, only some 15 per cent arise from the 

 neighbourhood of the ends of the old roots, the rest originating 

 from higher up towards the stem, or even from the stem itself. 

 [Slide shown.] 



Two other conclusions may also be drawn from what has been 

 mentioned, namely, that it can make little or no difference to the 

 future welfare of the tree whether the ends of the old roots are 

 trimmed, or left jagged and torn, as they are when removed from 

 the nursery, nor whether these roots are carefully spread out in the 

 ground, instead of being huddled into the hole prepared for them ; 

 for it is the new rootlets which are to be formed, and not the old 

 ones, on which the future life of the tree depends. Both these 

 conclusions have been verified by actual experiment. Even when 

 the roots were twisted and tied together in a bundle, the tree did 

 just as well as when they were spread out in the orthodox fashion. 

 [Slide shown.] 



It is thus seen that all these practices which are supposed to be 

 essential to the proper planting of a tree, are really immaterial, and, 

 in fact, that the violation of them within certain limits is beneficial. 

 But the benefit was not suflBcient to explain certain results which we 

 obtained, and which puzzled us for many years. We had made a 

 plantation in which, by way of demonstration, the trees had been' 

 planted in violation of all the accepted canons, and we expected that 

 these trees would afford an awful lesson to the careless planter. But 

 instead of that, they flourished rather better than their carefully- 

 planted neighbours. The results were naturally set aside as acci- 

 dental, and a repetition, and subsequently, many repetitions were 



