406 ANNUAL REPORT. 



IMPROVEMENT OF FRUIT TREES BY SEEDLING 



CULTURE. 



By D. a. Eobertson, of St. Paul. 



The growing of apple trees of Russian origin in the climate of 

 Minnesota, having been established by successful experiment^ 

 gives assurance of future success in producing improved seedling- 

 varieties of standard trees of pears, cherries and plums, which may- 

 be grown with the same success as apples. 



We should follow the example of Russia, where the climate is so 

 nearly like our own, by producing new varieties of superior quality^ 

 from a selection of our own home grown seedlings, and no longer 

 depend upon foreign born trees. In this way only, have all the 

 orchard fruits (and all other edible fruits and plants) been improved 

 from their wild, original ancestors, to their present noble types of 

 civilized excellence. Trees of warm winter climates can never be- 

 naturalized to a very cold winter climate, or naturalized at all in 

 distant regions, without losing some of their best qualities. To 

 become perfectly naturalized and thoroughbred in any change of 

 surroundings, trees, like animals, must be born again as seed- 

 lings, and of all plants, this is most positively observable in fruit 

 culture. Unlike annual and herbacious vegetation, we cannot^ 

 without much greater expense than profit, invent means to shelter 

 our standard trees from the severest cold of our winter months,, 

 and we must not forget that in our coldest winters, which recur 

 every few years, the temperature as indicated by the Fahrenheit 

 thermometers, occasionally, in some parts of the state, sinks as low 

 as 40 degrees below zero, and in the extreme north of Minnesota 

 to some degrees lower. Temperatures as low as these do not pre- 

 vent the healthy and fruitful growing in Russia of the standard 

 orchard trees just mentioned. These Russian trees are the result 

 of successive improvements in seedling culture. It should be men- 

 tioned, that by judicious forest tree protection, our climate will no 

 doubt become, before very many years, greatly ameliorated, and 

 then our orchards will be much less exposed to the meteorological 

 severities of the different seasons. 



