350 Mr A. Stephen Wilson on Tillering. 



On Tillering. By A. Stephen Wilson, Esq., Nortli Kin- 

 mundj, Aberdeenshire. (Photographs Exhibited). 



(Read 9tli February 1882.) 



By the word " tillering," as applied to a cereal grass, is 

 meant the producing of more stalks than one from a single 

 seed. The plumule of the embryo grows into the first or 

 primary stalk, and all the secondary stalks arise either 

 directly from the primary stalk or from secondary stalks 

 thus directly produced. All the secondary stalks are buds 

 growing out of stalks, and not out of roots. Indeed, it can- 

 not be properly Said that the primary stalk itself grows from 

 the roots ; this stalk and the roots grow simultaneously, 

 and have a biological interdependence, but the roots no 

 more produce the stalk than a man's legs produce his 

 head. 



All the tillers or secondary stalks are thus of the nature 

 of branches, the buds or beginnings of which arise from 

 the two or three lowermost nodes of the primary or 

 secondaries. No such buds are thrown out upon the 

 internodes. The secondary stalks or tillers, which are 

 really branches, throw out roots from their bases and lower 

 nodes, but no stalk whatever arises directly from any root. 

 In some plants a stalk may arise directly from a root, or a 

 root may arise directly from a stalk, but in the grasses no 

 stalk ever arises from off a root. 



But this note is not intended to be an exposition of the 

 principle of tillering, but merely an introduction to the 

 photographs now exhibited of barley and oat plants. 



These plants were grown in the garden at Nortli 

 Kinmundy, along with some others not quite so prolific, 

 in order to test the limits of tillering. Previous experi- 

 ments had shown that the main conditions necessary to 

 ensure tillering is shallow planting. W^hen a seed is put 

 down 2 or 3 inches, the plumule is drawn out and ex- 

 hausted before reaching the surface where the tillering 

 arises. When a seed is merely covered with earth it goes 

 into tillering at once. The first set of seeds were torn up 

 by the sparrows, so that a part of the tillering season was 

 lost. The second set were protected until safe. The best 



