Transplanting Trees 



evergreens die if their roots are exposed to the air. Yet all are 

 successfully transplanted if pains are taken. The rhododendrons 

 on Southern mountains are brought by carloads to Northern 

 estates where they are set out with a loss of less than one per cent. 

 Evergreens of middle age and large size are successfully trans- 

 planted in the growing season. It requires careful work and 

 proper mechanical appliances to do these things, but there is no 

 secret method. Whatever grows in the neighbouring woods may 

 be safely trusted to thrive in home grounds unless violent changes 

 in soil, shade and moisture conditions are made. Even then, 

 some surprises are in store for the experimenting planter. Such 

 water-loving trees as black ash, cottonwood, willow, sycamore 

 and red maple do well in upland soil. Where transplanting from 

 the wild is practicable, one is justified in experimenting at the 

 cost of occasional failure. It is a part of wild gardening; it has a 

 piquant charm that can't be bought with money. "Cheaper at 

 the nursery," calls a neighbour, but the man with the spade and 

 wheelbarrow goes along to the woods. This is his heart's holiday. 



Trees differ by families and species in the tenacity of their 

 hold on life. Those with a tendency to strike root from joints 

 of the stem bear much abuse of roots. Such are most willows 

 and poplars, basswood, osage orange and mulberry. In general, 

 trees with many fibrous roots are most successfully transplanted. 

 If the main branches are short and extend laterally, making a 

 shallow but dense root system, the chances are best. If there 

 is a long tap root going straight down, with but sparse side branches 

 for feeding roots, difficulties and danger beset the transplanting. 

 The maples and elms illustrate the first class; hickories and white 

 oaks the second. "You can't transplant an oak too early nor 

 an elm too late," is Evelyn's assurance, very old but still true. 



A comparatively recent discovery is that certain families of 

 plants depend for their soil food upon the ministrations of fungi, 

 whose threads invest the rootlets completely, and have long been 

 mistaken for the root hairs themselves. So intimate is the contact 

 of this mycorhiia with the rootlets that the crude sap absorbed 

 by the fungus from the soil is conducted to the leaves for manu- 

 facture into sugar and starch. The return current of sap nourishes 

 not only the plant above ground and its root system, but also 

 the mycorhiza, which has no green tissues, and therefore no way 

 of elaborating plant food taken in the raw state. Each organism 



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