CHAPTER IX. 

 THE CULTIVATION OF GUAYULE 



Under the cultivation of guayule must be included all operations 

 intended to modify the relation of the plant to its environment. These 

 operations may be forestal or cultural, in the narrower sense. It is the 

 purpose of this chapter to set forth the conclusions as to the possibilities 

 which have presented themselves in both these directions. Although only 

 a beginning has been made in the solution of the many difficult practical 

 problems which have arisen, the more immediately insistent questions 

 involved have been fairly if not completely answered. The difficulty of 

 practice is not lessened by the fact that the problem before us is distinctly 

 a desert one, and the final answer to many questions may not be obtained 

 for many years. 



FORESTAL OPERATIONS. 

 PRESENT FIELD OPERATIONS. 



Up to the present time, with only very few experimental exceptions, 

 field operations have been confined to the collection of shrub in the great- 

 est possible amount with the greatest ease, for the sake of the immediate 

 monetary return. This has had both a bad and, in less degree, a good 

 result. In many places where shrub had been taken there were so many 

 small plants that it was thought that it would not pay to collect them, 

 and these will serve to repopulate the areas so treated. In other places, 

 where the stand consisted only of large plants, nearly every vestige has 

 been removed, leaving at most only the occasional small plants to lay the 

 foundations for the future. If in such places a few healthy medium-sized 

 plants had been left to produce seed, as common sense should have dic- 

 tated, ground that will be barren of guayule for many years might have 

 been repopulated, at any rate to some extent. 



The method which has ordinarily been used is to pull up the plant by 

 hand, and, while the method of cutting it off at the surface of the ground 

 has been advocated and to some extent practiced, pulling has been most 

 largely used. But in very rocky areas, where the plants frequently grow 

 in the fissures of the rock, from which it is often impossible to pull them 

 out, the peons will break or twist off the top, leaving the butt in the 

 ground. A specific case of this kind was noted by me in a part of the 

 Sierra de Ramirez, a range of mountains lying partly in each of the States 

 of Zacatecas and Durango, opposite Tanque de la Pendencia. On first 

 entering the guayule area, which had been worked in the winter of 1907- 

 08, scarcely any guayule was to be seen, but further search discovered 

 numerous young growths, visible with difficulty on account of their color 

 when seen in April 1909, which had come up from the basal portions of 

 plants which had been twisted off. Bare as this ground appeared to be 

 of guayule, there is little doubt that in time the stand will be replenished 

 to a large degree, if not fully. 



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