PLANTING DISTANCES 113 



another circle of the lower branches shows signs of decay and 

 eventually shares the fate of its predecessors. 



Any mycologist will inform planters that decaying branches 

 lying on the ground are fruitful sources of Diplodia. Yet on 

 most of such plantations portions of these decayed branches 

 continually crack under one's feet as one walks over the estate. 



In Sumatra things are very seldom so bad, and then gener- 

 ally only on small areas of the estates. The reason is, in the 

 first place, the oldest rubber there was nearly always formerly 

 interplanted with rows of Liberian coffee, which is a fairly 

 large bush and took up a good deal of space. Now that the 

 coffee has been cut out between the rubber trees, distances of 

 24 feet by 24 feet and 30 feet by 30 feet are not uncommon. 

 In the second place, the great majority of estates are planted at 

 distances of 20 feet by 20 feet, with trees which are yet young, 

 say five years old and under, and the evil effects of close-planting 

 have not yet manifested themselves. 



In Ceylon the fact that so very little flat land has been 

 available for planting rubber trees, for the reasons already 

 stated, helped to prevent matters becoming quite so bad in the 

 older estates there as in the Federated Malay States. Still, 

 the trouble is there also, and will become more and more mani- 

 fest if drastic thinning-out is not speedily done. At such close 

 distances as mentioned above no cultivation of the soil is 

 possible. It will surely be admitted that cultivation is a 

 necessity if trees are to be grown to the best advantage. Yet 

 those responsible for the management of many estates do not 

 appear to think so. Most planters appear to agree that not 

 more than fifty coconut trees should be planted out per acre, 

 and yet the same people plant out a hundred or more often 

 very much more rubber trees to the acre. 



Why? 



The reason why fifty coconut trees are planted per acre is 

 that long experience has shown that the trees grow better than 

 if planted closer. Long experience has shown that the coconut 

 trees can thus be better cultivated. Long experience has 

 proved that coconut trees at wide distances have a longer life. 

 Finally, long experience has shown, in numbers of nuts which 

 can be counted, that more nuts per acre and of much larger 

 size are obtained from trees widely planted. It is better to 

 H 



