130 



types have proved widely useful, a 

 macerator developed by the Forest 

 Service, and a hammer mill. Either 

 can produce several hundred pounds 

 of clean seeds a day. 



Some small fleshy fruits are dried 

 whole. However, the seeds of most 

 fleshy or pulpy fruits must be extracted 

 promptly to prevent spoilage. Small 

 lots can be cleaned by hand, by tread- 

 ing in tubs, or by rubbing through 

 hardware cloth with hand brushes and 

 water from a hose. Food choppers, 

 concrete mixers, feed grinders, cider 

 mills, wine presses, and restaurant po- 

 tato peelers have been used for remov- 

 ing seeds from fleshy fruits, but none 

 of these are as widely applicable as the 

 Forest Service macerator or the ham- 

 mer mill. Mulberries, chokecherries, or 

 Osage-orange fruits, which require 

 mashing and soaking before they can be 

 run through the macerator, should not 

 be allowed to ferment. 



Seeds of several species, such as elm, 

 maple, and oak, require no extraction, 

 but need merely to be freed of chaff 

 or trash. Often dried, without extrac- 

 tion, are some of the small fleshy fruits 

 such as the chokecherries, elders, hol- 

 lies, manzanitas, mountain-ashes, Rus- 

 sian-olives, and viburnums. 



Methods of seed extraction com- 

 monly used for several species are : 



Air or kiln drying : The arborvitaes, 

 baldcypress, bigcone-spruce, ceanoth- 

 uses, chamaecyparises, chestnut, chin- 

 quapins, cypresses, Douglas-fir, elms, 

 eucalyptus, firs, hemlocks, California 

 incense-cedar, larches, pines, poplars, 

 common prickly-ash, redwood, spruces, 

 sweetgum, willows. 



Kilns necessary: The Aleppo pine, 

 bishop pine, jack pine, lodgepole 

 pine, Monterey pine, pond pine, sand 

 pine. (The cones remain unopened on 

 the trees for several years in all these 

 species.) 



Threshing or screening: Acacias, 

 alders, baccharises, beeches, catalpas, 

 Kentucky coffeetree, filberts, fremon- 

 tias, hickories, honeylocusts, American 

 hornbeam, common lilac, locusts, Si- 

 berian pea-shrub, eastern redbud, the 



Yearbook of Agriculture 1949 



rhododendrons, silktree, sourwood, su- 

 macs, walnuts, witch-hazel. 



Depulping: Apples, aralias, barber- 

 ries, blackberries, buffaloberries, lilac 

 chaste-tree, the cherries, cotoneasters, 

 creepers, elders, grapes, hollies, honey- 

 suckles, black huckleberry, common 

 jujube, junipers, red mahonia, manza- 

 nitas, mountain-ashes, the mulberries, 

 Osage-orange, common pear, common 

 persimmon, plums, European privet, 

 raspberries, meadow rose, sassafras, 

 common sea-buckthorn, serviceberries, 

 silverberry, snowberries, western soap- 

 berry, common spicebush, tupelos, 

 viburnums, yews. 



Cleaning methods: Apache-plume, 

 ashes, birches, antelope bitterbrush, the 

 elms, hackberries, eastern hophorn- 

 beam, common hoptree, the lindens, 

 mountain-mahoganies, oaks, Carolina 

 silverbell, tanoak, common winterfat, 

 yellow-poplar. 



CLEANING is SOMETIMES necessary. 

 For better storage and handling, seeds 

 of many species must be cleaned of 

 chaff, trash, adhering fruit parts, or 

 empty seeds, after separation from the 

 fruits. Sometimes cleaning is combined 

 with extraction and often a combina- 

 tion of methods is required to clean 

 the seeds. Most of the conifer seeds, for 

 example, must be both dewinged and 

 fanned. 



Conifer seeds may be dewinged by 

 hand rubbing, beating or trampling in 

 sacks, or moistening and raking. Large- 

 scale dewinging is usually done in ma- 

 chines, which tumble the seeds against 

 stiff brushes, or in a macerator. Such 

 machines must be used and adjusted 

 carefully or much of the seed will be 

 injured. 



Often seeds can be cleaned satis- 

 factorily by running them through 

 screens, either dry or with running 

 water. Often two screens are used in 

 series, one with a mesh large enough 

 to pass the seeds but hold back larger 

 objects, and a second with a mesh 

 small enough to hold the seeds but to 

 pass smaller material. 



Fanning is the principal means of re- 



