430 



FORESTRY AND IRRIGATION 



September 



to 8 inches in the season. Most of the 

 plants set out were from 4 to 18 inches 

 in size that is 2 to 3 years old. These 

 have taproots often i to 2 or more feet 

 long, and they are therefore trans- 

 planted with some difficulty, and if 

 with proper care at some expense of 

 time. However, some plants I to 4 

 inches high, or i -year-old, were set 

 out, which did not succeed so well. 

 Most of the 10 per cent loss noted at 

 the end of the first season was con- 

 fined to this size class. It is evident, 

 therefore, that the larger sizes must be 

 used for transplanting, in spite of their 

 less suitable root system, and for suc- 

 ceeding years 4 to lo-inch stock will 

 be employed. Failures were due to 

 the inadequate root system, not suffi- 

 ciently developed to reach moisture 

 deeper in the soil, and so to maintain 

 the plant against the summer's 

 drought. 



Seedlings are thus seen to be hardy 

 to drought and frost, but are best 

 suited by rich moist soil. Experiment 

 has shown that they may apparently 

 be planted and succeed beyond the 

 natural altitude range of the tree in 

 the existing groves. Young seedlings 

 are also occasionally dug up by ranch- 

 ers and homesteaders living in the val- 



leys in the foothills, during visits made 

 to the bigtree groves. The Sequoia 

 saplings occasionally seen in the door- 

 yards of ranches in the foothills and 

 in yards in the towns through the San 

 Joaquin Valley have generally been 

 thus transplanted successfully from 

 the groves in the mountains. They 

 are here succeeding making excep- 

 tionally thrifty growth, and develop- 

 ing into fine ornamental trees, at alti- 

 tudes of from 300 or 500 feet up to 

 2,500 feet. 



This experiment in the General 

 Grant Park, and the success that has 

 attended it, points the way for the im- 

 provement by the officials in charge of 

 other bigtree groves. The presence of 

 a protected and well distributed repro- 

 duction, now lacking in most groves, 

 could be gradually brought about in 

 the Sequoia and Yosemite National 

 Parks by similar transplanting by the 

 members of the ranger service, and 

 much interest for visitors would be 

 added from the visible comparison in 

 the groves of the seedlings and sap- 

 lings of the bigtrees growing under 

 the broad spreading crowns and mas- 

 sive columns of the mature giants, 

 while the rapid growth of the saplings 

 would later furnish trees of pole size, 

 now only infrequently met with. 



SPRUCE SEED SOWN BROADCAST 



BY 



A. KNECHTEL 



Forester, New York State Forest, Fish and Game Commission. 



TT is a matter of common observation 

 that evergreen trees spring up 

 readily in poplar groves, and hence a 

 notion has become prevalent that 

 spruce finds in such places good con- 

 ditions for reproduction, and that 

 spruce forests might be started by 

 scattering the seed under the poplar 

 trees. To put the matter to a test, the 

 Forest, Fish and Game Commission of 

 New York sowed in 1903 about a 



bushel of native spruce seed in the 

 poplar groves near Aiden Lair, Essex 

 county, New York. The ground was 

 quite well covered with poplars which 

 ranged in diameter from four to ten 

 inches. There were no small ever- 

 greens beneath them, nor were there 

 any large spruce trees nearby from 

 which seed might be shed. There- 

 fore, any spruce trees that have begun 

 to grow there during the past three 



