How Trees are Multiplied 



flinty seeds. The witch hazel bursts open its woody pods in 

 October and the seeds are shot out Hke bullets from a gun. 



Thousands of tree seeds are sown where but tens may hope 

 to germinate and grow. Some seeds (e. g., willow) must germinate 

 at once or they lose their vitality and die. Most of these cannot 

 start unless they fall in very moist soil. So each has its peculiar 

 limitations, and these keep the number of seedlings down. Fortu- 

 nate kinds are not particular as to soil. This is especially true 

 of those whose seeds will wait till a second year if the first does 

 not offer them a chance to grow. 



The willows illustrate better than other trees another method 

 of reproduction. They rise superior to the limitations of their 

 feeble seeds, and cast off twigs which strike root and grow into 

 trees. Many willows have twigs that are brittle at the base. 

 Touch one lightly and off it snaps in your hand. Every wind 

 breaks off these natural willow cuttings and scatters them. 

 Stream banks are lined for miles with trees of one kind. The 

 twigs floating down stream lodged and grew. Sandbanks are 

 covered by the same means. Even willow posts set green follow 

 the twig habit and grow into trees. Osage orange and mulberry, 

 poplar and basswood root quickly as cuttings. Theoretically, 

 any plant will do the same. In practice, few trees are economically 

 propagated in this way. 



Young chestnut and oak trees follow old ones by the sprouting 

 of the old stumps. It is not uncommon to find an ancient stump 

 with a whorl of young trees circling its base — from five to a dozen 

 of them. Foresters call this the coppice method of renewing 

 woodlands. It is a cheap way to reproduce timber. These 

 "suckers" grow rapidly, for they have the whole root system of 

 the parent tree to feed them. Such trees, however, are short 

 lived. Most of the familiar hardwoods sprout from the stump — 

 maples, elms, beech, ashes and locusts. Also the softer-wooded 

 birches, basswoods, willows and poplars. The only conifers 

 that do this are the redwood and the pitch pine. 



It is common to see a white poplar or a Lombardy poplar 

 or a garden plum tree growing neglected in the midst of a crowd 

 of youngsters. These are not seedling trees, but suckers from 

 the parent roots. They resemble coppice growth where they 

 spring out close to the tree's "collar," but they have not waited 

 for the removal of the old trunks. Such trees are nuisances on a 



494 



