AMERICAN ASSOCIATION OF NURSERYMEN. 289 



AMERICAN ASSOCIATION OF NURSERYMEN, 

 ANNUAL MEETING, 1905. 



ROY UNDERWOOD, LAKE CITY. 



(By request, Mr. Roy Underwood, who attended as representa- 

 tive of the Jewell Nursery Co., contributes herewith a brief de- 

 scription of this meeting, emphasizing particularly a talk on "Crown 

 Gall and Root Knot," as being of special interest to our readers.) 



The annual convention held at West Baden Springs, Ind., June 

 14, 15 and 16, proved to be the largest convention of the associa- 

 tion's history. The central location and fame of the Springs re- 

 sulted in a splendid attendance, larger than the Detroit convention 

 of two years ago, which up to that time had held the record. With 

 the development of the west, the American Association is adding to 

 its membership a large number of active nurserymen from all parts 

 of the Alississippi watershed, and the importance of the nursery 

 industry in this section is more evident each year. 



The usual papers and discussions relative to the technical fea- 

 tures of the nursery business were present. The most widely ad- 

 vertised and in some respects the most interesting features of the 

 program were the illustrated lectures on "Soil Inoculation," by Dr. 

 George T. Moore, and on "Crown Gall and Root Knot," by Prof. 

 George G. Hedgecock, both well known workers in the U. S. 

 Department of Agriculture. The latter subject was naturally of 

 the greatest interest to all nurserymen present, owing to the drastic 

 laws framed by some states to prohibit the planting of trees in- 

 fected with this problematical disease. Prof. Hedgecock, under the 

 direction of the secretary of agriculture, has made extensive ex- 

 periments with this so-called disease and after the most careful 

 investigation has come to the conclusion that, like the nitrogen- 

 fixing nodules found on many plants like the pea and bean, it is not a 

 disease in the sense that it affects the successful growth and life 

 of the tree. Crown gall and root knot, according to Prof. Hedge- 

 cock, have been known to fruit growers from the very earliest 

 periods of history. While both of these foreign growths, found 

 in various parts of the root system of our commercial fruits, are 

 caused by widely varying causes, they appear to be not only local 

 in their manifestations, but also temporary in their appearance on 

 any particular tree or set of trees. The experiments show that 

 three-year-old trees badly infested with crown gall and root knot 

 after having been planted in the orchard three or four years when 

 dug up were found to have lost every vestige of the disease. In 

 a like manner, old orchard trees known to have no trouble of this 

 character when planted, developed the disease locally and tempo- 



