Eleventh Report of the State Entomologist! 185 



How the Basket Willow is Grown. 



The willow grown is the European Osier. It is propagated from pieces 

 cut by a machine into nine-inch lengths and set six inches into the 

 ground. These are placed about fourteen inches apart, in rows three feet 

 apart, permitting the use of a cultivator between them and hoeing as often 

 as necessary. The fields are liberally enriched with barnyard manure. 

 An ordinary soil is as well adapted to the growth as a wet one. It can 

 be cut for use the first year, but is not in full vigor till the third or fourth 

 year, and continues to yield good crops for ten or twelve years, when it 

 should be plowed up and set out anew. A good growth will average 

 about six feet in height. It is cut in November when the leaves have 

 fallen. It may then be steamed for loosening the bark, and the peeling 

 is done by children in the shops of the basket-makers. 



The steaming — submitting to exhaust steam for about twenty minutes 



in large boxes holding two tons of the willows placed on a heavy truck 



for convenience in gathering and delivering the willows — is done by two 



firms in Liverpool, one of which, Mr. A. H, Crawford, treated i,8oo tons 



the last year. 



Its Yield and Value. 



The green willow is worth from $15 to $45 per ton; when peeled and 

 dried, six cents a pound. The growers raise from ^^ an acre to 60 acres. 

 Mr. E. P. Black, a very successful grower, who finds an abundant return 

 for the labor bestowed upon his crop, cultivates 20 acres. The yield is 

 from three to eight tons per acre. About 500 acres are grown in the 

 town of Salina, Onondaga county. 



Extent of its Cultivation in Western New York. 



In addition to Onondaga county, where the crop is grown the most 



extensively, it is also grown in Oswego, Oneida, Madison, Cayuga, 



Schuyler, Seneca, Wayne, Ontario, Livingston, Monroe, Genesee, and 



Wyoming counties, but I am not able to give the extent of cultivation in 



the several counties, or the comparative amount of injury from the willow 



beetle in them. 



Not a Native Species. 



As before stated, the willow of Western New York is not a native, but has 

 been introduced from France. It is the Osier or basket-willow of Europe,. 

 Salix viminalis. A German willow is grown to a limited extent. It is a 

 taller and stouter plant, j'lietimes attaining 12 or 14 feet in height. It 

 is not as subject to inseci attack, but it is less serviceable for baskets, 

 being coarser, less pliant, and only adapted for the heavier bottoms of 



