310 MINNESOTA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



The President : The place where mine are is the most trying 

 I know of. Absolutely no other apple tree has succeeded in that 

 situation. It is a black soil, the bottom of an old lake, a coarse bot- 

 tom with clam shells and cobble stones all the way down to the hard 

 pan, twenty to thirty feet. 



Mr. Oliver Gibbs : How many have found it not a bad blighter? 

 (An almost unanimous show of hands.) 



Mr. C. G. Patten (Iowa) : I have not found it a bad blighter. 



]Mr. H. F. Busse: I grafted some in 1885, and they grew along 

 for three or four years ; I planted them alongside the Whitney Xo. 

 20, the Wealthy and the Martha crab, and I think it was the fourth 

 year after planting they blighted so it killed top, root and everything. 



Mr. Frank Yahnke : When you speak of the pyrus baccata it 

 is like speaking of the Prunus Americana. Riegel speaks of a num- 

 ber 01 them. The true Siberian is about as big as a currant. I have 

 tried to get some light on this subject as to whether it is a blighter 

 or not, and I find it is not as bad a blighter as a great many other 

 crabs that might be mentioned. The cjuestion is whether to have 

 blight part of the time or root-killing all the time. 



Mr. L. R. Moyer: Is not the Tonka one of the varieties of the 

 pyrus baccata? 



Prof. Hansen : Yes, I think I should call it an improved 

 baccata. The only way you can tell the difference between the pure 

 Siberian and the mongrel Siberian is that the true Siberian has a 

 smooth calyx. It is the same way with plums; you go far enough 

 south, you get the Chickasaw plum, and in the north you get the 

 Americana plum. With the apple in Asia it happens the same way. 

 In the south you get the pyrus malus, and in the north you get the 

 pure crab. There is a large part of Russia and Europe where they 

 intermingle, and they get a sort of mongrel type. It is neither a 

 pure crab or a true apple ; it is half and half. 



Mr. Clarence Wedge: I realize that this subject of root-killing 

 is a very live one, at least to the nursers'men. So far as the ideas 

 advanced by my neighbor, Mr. Richardson, are concerned, while we 

 are generally on good terms, I desire to combat some of his ideas 

 that root-killing is not prevalent in our orchards. I do not know 

 how it is in his county, I know he has a different soil, but in our 

 county the orchards have suffered very severely. You remember 

 my friend, Mr. Freeman, speaking of an orchard that has been en- 

 tirely killed. It was my lot to go through that orchard some time 

 ago, and it is my opinion that they died from root injury. As re- 

 gards a cover crop of weeds, buckwheat or some other such cover 

 crop being a protection against root-killing, I do not find it so on my 

 place. Last winter I lost very heavily of all ages in my nursery, one, 

 two and three year old. A large part was protected by the most 

 abundant growth of buckwheat I have ever seen, and yet I lost two- 

 thirds of my trees. It was so all through the county, both in the 

 orchards and nurseries. Regarding the inducing cause of root-kill- 

 ing, I know that in a dry season there is much more danger of root- 

 killing than in a reasonably moist season, but we must take con- 

 ditions as they are, and the average of every year in this country is 



