THE MINNESOTA 



HORTICULTURIST. 



VOL. 34' FEBRUARY, 1906. No. 2 



seedlings: their inception, treatment and 



USES. 



J. M. UNDERWOOD, LAKE CITY. 



This subject that I am asked to speak upon this afternoon is 

 undoubtedly the most important one that pertains to our north- 

 western horticulture, and I only wish that I could treat the subject 

 as it demands, although much of the ground has been covered in the 

 discussion of the past few days. However, it is so important that if 

 I go over the ground that has been covered during this meeting it 

 will do no harm, but will only emphasize its importance. 



By seedling we usually understand some tree or plant grown 

 from seed without any precaution to reproduce the same variety, 

 but the term has a very much wider application than is generally 

 supposed. One might almost claim that every variety of tree, fruit 

 or flower is a seedling in it's origin — it is only after it is perpetu- 

 ated by grafting, budding, layering, or grown from cuttings, that the 

 term seedling ceases to apply. The Baldwin apple, as indeed all of 

 the commercial varieties of apples, so far as I know, are seedlings 

 without having been intelligently, and systematically bred. The 

 same is true of pears, peaches, plums, cherries and all the small 

 fruit's. There are some exceptions where fruits and flowers have 

 been bred by hand pollination by the uniting of the pollen of one 

 variety with the stigma of another variety, thus producing a third 

 and different variety. 



In the vegetable creation, this process has been mainly left to 

 nature, and so we have had only chance results, many of which are 

 marvelous andi intensely interesting, and of great value ; but it is a 

 slow and uncertain way, and it is time we took lessons from the 

 rapid and wonderful progress made in the animal kingdom by those 

 who have made it a study and have put' intelligent selection into 

 the breeding of animals until they have produced classes of animals 

 that have the maximum amiount of meat and available product, with 

 a minimum amount of bone and waste material ; or, as in the dairy 

 breeds of cattle, they can accurately and intelligently increase the 

 yield of milk and butter to more than four times that formerly 

 produced from what we might call seedling stock. 



