ON SOME ORNAMENTALS 



distributing them and planting them in various 

 regions of the southwestern United States. 



The trees that grew from these suckers have 

 proved to be pistillate, as expected, and produced 

 fruit equal to that of northern Africa. Consider- 

 able difficulty was experienced in securing suckers 

 from the best trees, even private individuals not 

 being allowed to own them in the original country. 

 As to the date palm, the progress already made in 

 the improvement of the fruit indicates beyond the 

 shadow of a doubt that still further improvement 

 will be made in many directions. It is probable 

 that the colony of fruit-bearers thus introduced 

 will spread indefinitely, until the date palm be- 

 comes an important economic tree in warmer 

 portions of America. 



It is even more important with the palm than 

 with other fruit-bearing trees that propagation 

 should be carried out in this way, because when 

 the plants are grown from the seed only half of 

 them will be bearers of pistillate flowers. 



The pollen-bearing trees will of course bear no 

 fruit, and while there must be here and there one 

 of these in the palm grove one pollenate to about 

 twenty-five pistillate trees it would be an obvious 

 waste of space to give over half the ground to 

 sterile trees. Yet there is no way of determining 

 whether an individual tree is a male or a female 



[205] 



