INFLUENCE OF SOURCE OF SEED 



Many Minor Characters Dependent on Habitat and Easily Changed Under New 

 Conditions — Apparent Example of Inheritance of Acquired Characteristics 

 In Pines Crippled by Growth in Poor Soil. 



Arnold Engler, ^ 



in Mitt, der Schweiz. Centralanstalt. f. d. Jorsticke Versuchswesen, 



(Contributions from the Swiss Central vStation for Forest Research) Zurich, 1913; 153 pp., 12 tables. 



FOR many years foresters have 

 been occupied with the question 

 whether the characters of cli- 

 matic races of trees are heredi- 

 tary, and whether they persist for longer 

 or shorter periods in seedlings which 

 have been raised under other climatic 

 conditions. In many different countries 

 experiments and observations have been 

 devoted to this practically important 

 question, and the work before us is an 

 important contribution to the subject. 

 More than 70,000 pine" seedlings 

 were grown at 12 stations in Switzer- 

 land at successive altitudes from 370 to 

 1980 meters, the seeds having come 

 from localities in northern Europe, in 

 the Alps, in western Russia, in southern 

 France, and from intennediate locali- 

 ties. The seedlings arc now from six 

 to seven years old. From data ob- 

 tained from these cultures and from 

 other observations the author is able to 

 show that characters such as the shape 

 of the scales of the cones, the resinous 

 coating of the buds and the age limit of 

 the needles are in large measure depend- 

 ent upon the habitat and soon undergo 

 change when the plants are grown in 

 another climate On the other hand he 

 demonstrates that there is an "innate 

 physiological disposition" of the plant 

 which is preserved by its progeny in a 

 foreign habitat and which is expressed, 

 for exam]3le, in a poorer growth in an 

 unsuitaVjle climate. Thus, the poor 

 form of the pines grown in Livonia 

 from seed from southwestern Germany 

 is not due to the fact that the seeds 

 came from inferior trees but from the 



inability of the race to adapt itself to 

 the climate of Livonia. The pine of 

 western Russia, the Riga pine, possesess 

 on the other hand a high degree of phy- 

 siological adaptability and consequently 

 retains its good habit of growth even in 

 southern France. In contrast to this, 

 pines from middle or northern Sweden 

 when grown no farther from their home 

 than northern Germany are inferior to 

 the native race in growth and in shape. 



CORRELATION FOUND. 



In the plantings at the Swiss station 

 it was found that in seedlings one to 

 two years old as well as those six to seven 

 years old, the growth in height de- 

 creased with increasing altitude or in- 

 creasing latitude of the locality from 

 which the seed came. An exception is 

 afforded by six or seven-year old seed- 

 lings of the Engadine pine {Pinus sil- 

 vestris engadinensis) which even at the 

 lower altitude made a much finer and 

 more vigorous growth than seedlings of 

 the same age of the common pine 

 {Pinus silvestris), obtained from lower 

 altitudes in the Alps. At the higher 

 stations this variety surpassed all the 

 other races included in the experiment. 

 Among these the plants grown from 

 seeds collected in France, in southwest- 

 ern Germany and in northern Switzer- 

 land showed an especially poor habit of 

 growth, and those from the two latter 

 localities suffered from dying of the tips 

 because they continued growth too late 

 in the fall. Especial interest attaches 

 to the observation that the seeds of 

 pines which had been crippled by un- 



iTranslation of a review by Busgen in "Zeitschrift fiir Botanik," Vol. 5, p. 838, 1913. 

 '^Piniis silvestris is the species referred to throughout this review, unless otherwise mentioned. 



185 



