THE INDEPENDENCE OF AMERICAN NURSERIES 



BY DAVID FAIRCHILD 

 AGRICULTURAL EXPLORER IN CHARGE OF FOREIGN SEED AND PLANT INTRODUCTION 



THE nurseries of this country are quite as indepen- 

 dent of foreign plant material as are the other indus- 

 tries which American ingenuity and industry have 

 built up, but, like all the other great industries, that of 

 the production of small plants has not confined its activ- 

 ities to the growing of American plants or the handling 

 of home-grown material. 



I have ridden through nurseries in the West where 

 the rows of nursery stock were a mile long and where 

 there were thousands of these rows of small plants wait- 

 ing to be sent out all over this country and into Canada. 



The customs returns for the year 1915 give an import 

 of plants in a living condition, as distinct from food 

 materials of a plant nature, amounting to $3,731,000. Of 

 this amount about one million represents what might be 

 called hard wooded plants such as evergreen and decidu- 

 ous trees and shrubs which are set out with the idea 

 of their becoming permanent residents of our parks, 

 our orchards or our roadsides. The remainder repre- 

 sents the large importations of so-called florists' stock 

 such things as lily of the valley clumps for florists, 

 hyacinths, tulip bulbs, bleeding hearts, lily bulbs, narcis- 



GOVERNMENT BULB CULTURE 



Portion of nursery planting of narcissi at the United States Department of Agriculture Bulb Garden, Bellingham, Washington. Madame Plemp in the fore- 

 ground. Sir Watkin in the background. This picture demonstrates the possibility of bulb culture becoming an American industry. 



This one firm alone plants a million and a half peach pits 

 and half a million apple seedlings each year, and lists 

 from 1800 to 2000 different varieties of plants for sale in 

 its catalogue. Sixteen horses harnessed in teams together 

 were pulling the machine which undercuts the small apple 

 trees preparatory to lifting them for packing and shipping. 

 Twenty-five miles of tile drains had been laid under the 

 ground to carry off the superfluous moisture. 



The nurseries of this country cannot be said to be 

 dependent upon foreign sources in the way in which this 

 term is commonly understood, but that there are thou- 

 sands of species of plants needed by our nurserymen for 

 the development of the greatest possible number of super- 

 lative varieties of native plants cannot be doubted. 



sus bulbs, begonias, gloxinias, orchids, palms, azalea plants 

 for forcing, iris, cannas, dahlias and amaryllis plants 

 which as a rule arc either grown under glass or for a season 

 or two in our flower borders or on our lawns and 

 which, with perhaps one or two exceptions, can be 

 grown in this country. 



If we consider the imports of hard-wood material, for 

 example, we find that we import 8,776,000 young seed- 

 lings of the apple, pear, quince, and St. Julien plum val- 

 ued at $41,314. If we assume that a half of these grow 

 and are budded or grafted and set out in the orchards of 

 the country, they will represent in the course of time 

 4,388,000 fruit trees, and assuming that the average dis- 

 tance apart of these trees in the orchard would be 20 feet, 



213 



