232 



AMERICAN FORESTRY 



To list' this device effectively, logged-over land that is 

 to grow up again could be grafted to choice varieties 

 which, with a little care, could be permitted to grow up 

 tail and straight with the other timber. I have seen the 

 Paragon and other grafted chestnuts do this. When mer- 

 chantable pole size had been reached, all timber could be 

 cut. but the grafted trees which, with their height of 

 30 to 60 feet, would at once 

 start to bearing useful 

 crops, and, with the de- 

 velopment of the side 

 branches down their trunks, 

 reach a high maximum of 

 productivity in a few years. 



Friit in the Orthodox 

 Forest 



It is not necessary for 

 all of this article to be 

 heterodoxy. There is one 

 place where I can be ortho- 

 dox, and urge the foresters 

 to keep any definition of 

 forestry they want and still 

 have other crops than 

 wood. Plant the cork oak 

 tree. We undoubtedly have 

 a large area with suitable 

 climate, judging by the abil- 

 ity of this tree to survive 

 and reach its best in poor 

 and rocky lands in the 

 Iberian Peninsula as well 

 as to thrive in experimental 

 plantings over a wide area 

 in this country. The argu- 

 ment that springs to so 

 many persons' minds, 

 namely, the Old World 

 with cheap labor, does not 

 hold in connection with the 

 cork oak, in which the number of days' labor for strip- 

 ping a ton is very small, and the value per ton high and 

 increasing with our increased demands for it. I may say, 

 from some examination of cork-producing areas in Spain, 

 that there is very little increase in output promised in 

 that country, and those responsible for American forests 

 will do well to plant considerable areas of it. 



In its home land cork forest makes a considerable part 

 of its income by feeding swine with acorns. I want to call 

 attention to the apparently easy possibility of having a 

 cork oak tree as far up as we want to raise cork, and graft- 

 ing an evergreen (ilex) oak at the top. This latter tree, 

 with its greater acorn qualities will undoubtedly increase 

 the yield through acorns, and there is no apparent theo- 

 retic reason why it should hurt the cork. The general 

 practice of grafting oaks is not difficult, and I have been 

 told by Spaniards of successful inter-grafting between 

 these two species. The work would not be extensive if 

 the Barcelona type of cork tree, namely, the straight 



SUCKERS OF SCRUB OAK 



These, locally known as "turkey oak,' 

 sandy soil over which a forest fire had 

 stone formation on the crest of the 

 Virginia. 



trunk, were favored, while the Portuguese shape with four 

 or five branches would not require an unreasonable amount 

 of grafting. An even simpler process for the getting of 

 desired types of oaks on large areas would be the planting 

 of oak forests, using seed that would come true to type 

 of desired strains. I have been told by the plant breeders 

 that it would be a comparatively simple matter to get 



such strains of acorns, and 

 the time involved would not 

 be so long as first thought 

 would suggest if one would 

 follow some such device as 

 this. Select the desired 

 strains, hybridize them, 

 sprout the hybrids, test 

 them by grafting on mature 

 trees so that in a compara- 

 tively short time the true 

 yielding strains could be 

 found, and then these could 

 be grown in some isolated 

 spot where no other oak 

 trees nearby could cross 

 fertilize. Such spots might 

 be found in islands like the 

 Catalina Islands, in isolated 

 places in evergreen forests, 

 or say out in the great 

 plains. In fact the oppor- 

 tunity of establishing such 

 botanic islands is very great. 



Program 



Apparently the steps in 

 the development of this 

 piece of work should be 

 somewhat as follows: 



1. Search for and test 

 of new useful species, such 

 as the honey locust, which 

 is yet nowhere a crop. 

 Another example of this possibility is the osage orange, 

 a magnificent timber tree producing heavily of big fruit 

 from which undoubtedly we could extract a number of 

 useful things if we handled them in carload lots. I have 

 been told that they contain starch. 



The list of trees valuable for both wood and fruit is 

 doubtless large, especially if we consider the possibilities 

 from the best tree of the species, and of breeding from a 

 selection of such trees. That brings us to the second 

 part of the program. 



2. Search for good parent trees. 



We know that the persimmon is a tree capable of 

 thriving in a field that is so poor as to be " throwed away." 

 All over the territory below Mason and Dixon's Line, and 

 in some places above it, we know that it is a heavy yielder 

 of fruit, that it is the most nutritious fruit grower east of 

 the land of dates, that it is prized by pigs, sheep, horses, 

 cows and humans, that it grafts easily, but we do not 

 yet know where are the best parent trees. The recent 



' grew in thirty months on a very poor 

 swept. The soil was of Cambrian sand- 

 Blue Ridge Mountains near Bluemont, 



