NOTES ON FRUIT BREEDING FOR THE NORTHWEST. 



341 



tion grounds last summer were some of Manitoba origin. Greater 

 earliness must be insisted upon for our plums. 



There is one thing to 

 consider, and that is, we 

 cannot breed hardiness into 

 seedlings. You can breed 

 fruit seedlings by the mil- 

 lions and by selection bring 

 them up to large size and 

 good quality, but the all-es- x. 

 sential point of hardiness | 

 must be there in the first 5- 

 place. Hardiness is put '^ 

 there by nature and is a « 

 characteristic that cannot be g 

 acquired by better selection. ■§ 

 Here is a bombshell I intend ^ 

 to throw into the seedling !■ 



A 1 • ? 



camp. As quoted m my n 



paper, De CandoUe says at 5 



least four or five thousand J 



years are necessary to cause ^ 



any modification in the con- ^■ 



stitution of a plant enabling '^ 



it to withstand a greater S, 



degree of cold. Plants have 5 



not advanced one hundred p 



miles north of their natural g" 



limits in historic times. How- | 



ever, the work can be done o 



by nature because, for in- g" 



stance, the box elder has ^ 



been adapted to climates '« 



varying as widely as Kansas, 5 



Virginia, Minnesota and 3 



Manitoba, since southern box S 



elders winter-kill at the north | 



although botanically they are 5' 



the same as those of far ^ 



northern orign. Many of our 



nurserymen now realize this 



and are careful in the source 



their tree seeds. Others 



find it to be too expensi\e 



to be straight and honest in 



these things, it is so easy and 



tempting to buy our seeds from milder climates. The state should 



help in the matter of bearing the added expense in the exploration 



work in order to get hardy evergreen, seeds at the north. 



We are too impatient with some of our orchard fruit seedling 

 work and are barking up the wrong tree. To attempt to adapt the 

 European plums, such as those of the Lombard type, to the north 



