12 PRACTICAL TREE-PLANTING IN OPERATION. 



Nebraska, and the Dakotas, regions where tree planting is most needed 

 for protection to stock, orchards, and buildings, and for fuel, posts, and 

 other farm purposes. 



This center of tree-planting activity, being as it is an open prairie, 

 must depend upon careful and painstaking planting to approach the 

 conditions prevailing in regions originally wooded, where trees grow 

 when once planted without further attention. This fact is most forcibly 

 illustrated in the present condition of many tree claims on the prairies 

 of the West. Although occasional plantations have been successful, 

 as illustrated in Plate I, fig. 1, the greater number, on account of un- 

 favorable locations or lack of proper attention in planting ami sub- 

 sequent care, have been failures. The illustration shown in Plate I, 

 fig. 2, represents the present condition of hundreds of such claims, 

 and is a strong argument in favor of better judgment regarding the 

 selection of locations for plantations and of fuller knowledge of the 

 proper care and management of forest trees in the plantation. 



Adjacent to the great plains between the Kocky Mountains and the 

 Mississippi River there is both an eastern and a western limit of tree 

 growth under natural conditions that is, a place where trees give way 

 to lower forms of vegetation. This limit is largely fixed by the amount 

 and the season of rainfall, although before the period of settlement it 

 was determined to considerable extent by prairie fires. If we plant 

 trees beyond this limit it is evident that they will have to be handled 

 differently from the way nature treats the trees which spring from 

 seeds blown or otherwise carried upon prairie lands from distant wood- 

 lands. In the latter case the self-sown seeds frequently germinate, 

 but in the struggle of the young trees for existence among the prairie 

 grasses they invariably die. If they did not there would be no prairies. 

 Therefore, when young trees are planted beyond ,the limits of natural 

 tree growth they must be given some advantage over the indigenous 

 vegetation or they will die, for the same reason that trees starting 

 from self-sown seeds die. They must be protected. 



There is probably not a single inhabited region in the United States 

 where some kinds of trees may not be made to grow when given 

 adequate assistance in the way of cultivation and irrigation. In 

 regions of extremely adverse conditions only the hardiest varieties 

 exist, and then only as stunted, poorly developed specimens, even 

 when the best effort is made to modify the existing conditions. On 

 the other hand, in prairie regions adjacent to natural woodlands many 

 varieties of trees grow almost as well, when once established, as they 

 do in the natural forest. The treeless West presents every intermedi- 

 ate condition between these two extremes, but in every case some 

 adverse conditions, calling for more or less effort on the part of man, 

 must be overcome. If these conditions are overcome, trees will grow; 

 if they are not, they will die. 



The chief object of the cooperative tree-planting work of the Division 



