302 MINNESOTA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



lar mind is still greatly clouded as to what is meant by a forest 

 plantation and what methods should be used for its establishment. 

 Many of our nurserymen whose customers are chiefly city people 

 have developed the idea that tree planting means landscape garden- 

 ing. Their catalogues abound in eulogies of imported species from 

 all quarters of the globe. They advertise novelties as though such 

 material had been tested and its merits proven. They place fancy 

 prices upon their nursery stock and expect the tree planter to be able 

 to purchase this material to be used in a forest plantation. A little 

 figuring at this time would probably throw some light on the pos- 

 sibilities of farmers following their advice. A nurseryman who can 

 sell transplanted Norway spruce trees two feet high for twenty-five 

 cents apiece seems to think that he is offering goods at bed-rock 

 prices and often cannot quite understand why every farmer tree 

 planter in Minnesota does not give large orders for this kind of ma- 

 terial. He forgets that a forest plantation to be of any value must 

 have enough trees on it to shade the ground as nature does in her 

 forestry operations. In order to secure a good cover of Norway 

 spruce within ten or fifteen years at least i,ooo trees should be 

 planted per acre, and 2,000 would be better. One thousand Nor- 

 way spruce trees at twenty-five cents apiece would cost $250. No 

 farmer who has good business sagacity is going to invest $250 per 

 acre in the nursery stock of a prospective forest plantation. The 

 average Norway spruce forests of Germany are not worth $250 

 per acre on the stump when the trees are one hundred years old. 

 The proposition that a farmer should invest $250 an acre in the 

 establishment of a forest plantation that must require one hundred 

 years of growth before it is mature is so absurd and so unreasonable 

 that it seems that no sane man would give such advice, and yet 

 such advice is common. A capital of $250 put at three per cent 

 compound interest would amount to $3,800 in one hundred years. 



One of the greatest needs we have today for furthering the cause 

 of forest tree planting is a class of nurserymen who comprehend 

 the situation and who have enough ingenuity about them to grow 

 evergreen seedlings by the million at less than one cent apiece. 

 Present prices and present methods of nursery practice, particularly 

 with conifers, are hindering the cause of tree planting more than 

 all other influences combined. Our nurserymen must learn that a 

 forest plantation is not a lawn or dooryard plantation, that for 

 forestry purposes very small seedlings are much to be preferred to 

 expensive transplanted trees, and that their present methods of prac- 

 tice can be improved and cheapened to a marvelous degree. Do not 

 ignore the city customer who wants a half-dozen trees once a year 



