190 MINNESOTA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



Judge L. R. Meyer : I do not know that I can explain why, 

 the trees on Pyrus baccata did not do as well last year as trees on 

 ordinary roots, unless the native crab apple, which does not grow 

 to be a large tree on its natural root system, is not large enough 

 to support a large apple tree. A few years ago I secured from Mr. 

 Wedge a large lot of plum trees that were grafted on sand cherry 

 stock. He was feeling very nice toward me, and he sent me the 

 trees on sand cherry stock because he thought they were better on 

 the sand cherry. It was like the Pyrus baccata, it did not have 

 root system enough to support the plum trees, and in a year or two 

 they failed, and that is the reason I think they do not do quite so 

 well. Of course the experiment was small, too small to make it 

 conclusive. The Martha and the Hibernal sulTered more than the 

 Wealthy, but having only a few trees it was not a fair test. 



Mr. C. E. Older: I merely wish to say that the injury to the 

 arbor vitae Mr. Smith speaks about has affected my hedge every 

 two or three years and comes in so-called death waves. It seems 

 to come when the wind is from the southwest, just as the frost is 

 going out of the trees, and we cannot depend upon a hedge for that 

 reason. 



Mr. Elliot : I would like to hear from Mr. Wedge. 



Mr. Wedge : I cannot enlighten you in any way. It is a mys- 

 tery to me from beginning to end. There are so many irregularities 

 in the behavior of everything, even arbor vitae trees, which is so 

 perfect a tree, and which with me has stood for twenty-five years 

 — yet there are occasionally one or two which without any apparent 

 cause fail in some localities. I thought the seed might account 

 for it, but I could not say whether it does or not. 



Mr. J. M. Underwood : In the nursery the arbor vitae was not 

 hurt a particle, but the pyramidalis killed back, some a foot and 

 some eighteen inches — below that line they were perfectly healthy. 

 It has seemed to me from the individual failures reported of the 

 arbor vitae and the pyramidalis that they were invariably due to 

 the fact that they had been in unfavorable locations, where, perhaps, 

 they did not have the strong root system they ought to have had. 

 They were planted somewhere, perhaps, where they were too crowd- 

 ed. The pyramidalis Mr. Smith spoke of as being killed was under a 

 strong growing weeping elm, which, in my humble opinion, took 

 too much moisture from the arbor vitae tree, and I do not think 

 it was in a healthy condition. I believe the injury, which was per- 

 haps due to sun-scald or something of that kind, attacked those weak 

 points. 



Mr. Harrison: How are the ^Siberian arbor vitae? . 



Mr. Underwood: It had no injury done to it except in the 

 case mentioned. 



Mr. Harrison : We have some arbor vitae hedges that are as 

 fine as any I have ever seen. They have been planted twenty-five 

 years and have not had a particle of damage done to them. I am 

 not willing to think that the arbor vitae is not a good thing. If it 

 lives only ten years, it is a good thing. 



