NOTES TO ACCOMPANY THE SEED LIST—19321 
This Seed List has been issued with the two-fold purpose of 
supplying seeds to American and foreign botanic gardens under 
the International Seed Exchange and to Garden members. 
Therefore the annual list of collected seeds has appeared as a 
number of the Recorp of the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. Since 
even the dictionary provides better reading than these lists, we 
have prepared a short account of the seed exchange and of seed 
collection to accompany the enumeration. 
Nearly two hundred botanic gardens located in all parts of the 
world publish lists of seeds obtained by them either from plants 
grown in their gardens or from wild plants. In our own Garden 
these seeds have played an important part in supplying the plants 
which may be observed in the conservatories and on the grounds. 
It should seem possible to obtain by this medium of exchange 
almost any species of plant desired. 
But there are innumerable difficulties to be encountered in the 
collection and transportation of seeds. Even in temperate regions 
it is disappointing to visit a place where flowers of the desired 
species were abundant, to find seeds meagerly developed or none at 
all. In the tropics the task is much harder. As Fairchild has re- 
marked in his readable book “ Exploring for Plants,” “ to get seeds 
[of the mangosteen] when they are in just the right condition 
means months of waiting and repeated expeditions, for the jungle 
folks are watching the trees too, and they often gather the fruits 
and scatter the seeds, so that when the collector returns to the 
tree he has marked, it is only to find it bare of fruits and he must 
wait another year for the next crop. Not one in a million of 
them [the natives] would lift a finger to get you the seeds even 
though he did know where to find them. . . . If he should happen 
to collect the seeds the chances are he would not know how to 
pack them so they would reach America alive.” 
Then there are the difficulties in accurately naming the seeds 
' Primarily for members of the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. 
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