THE PLANT 65 



Transplanting Crops. There are a number of crops which are 

 grown almost entirely from transplanted plants. Nearly all 

 orchard fruits and most berries are so grown. Tobacco is the only 

 field crop which is so raised. Some vegetables, such as tomato, cab- 

 bage,* and sweet potato, are raised in seed beds and transplanted. 



To transplant crop plants, the farmer usually selects what is called 

 a ' season ' that is, damp, rainy weather when the ground and air 

 are full of moisture. In such weather, transplanted plants are apt 

 to live. In dry weather, they may starve for lack of water before 

 their root systems get reestablished, especially if the soil is loose 

 and porous. If, however, the soil is too wet, air is excluded, the 

 soil is apt to ' bake,' and the plants do not thrive. 



EXPERIMENTS 



1 . Transplant a tomato, a pansy, and other plants, following carefully 

 the foregoing suggestions. 



2. Transplant similar plants, disregarding in each case one or more 

 of these suggestions. Compare the results and explain the causes. 



PLANT REPRODUCTION FROM SEEDS 



Budded Plants and Seedlings. A plant grown from a bud is, 

 as you have learned, a new plant produced from an old one. A 

 seedling, or plant grown from a seed, is usually made up of parts 

 of two plants. The pistil of the one receives pollen from the other. 

 From, the seed thus formed, a new plant is produced. There is, of 

 course, less room for variation in a budded plant than in a seedling, 

 which may have the qualities of one or both of its parents or even 

 of more distant ancestors. 



Most of our crop plants are grown from seeds. Since plants are 

 apt to resemble those from which the seed was taken, the matter 

 of seed selection is important. 



