11 



At the time of setting, in the spring of 1888, the box elders 

 used were one year seedlings, shipped in from nursery; 

 the ash were two years old, having been grown in our nursery 

 one year; the poplars were one year old, from cuttings set the 

 previous spring: the spruce were from ten to twelve inches 

 high, seedlings brought from the woods in the Black Hills. In 

 a few rows Scotch pine, twice transplanted, were used in place 

 of spruce. In a few cases cotton wood was substituted for pop- 

 lar. A very poor stand of box elder was secured, the yearling 

 trees not growing near so well as the two-year-olds set in other 

 plats. In '90 the blanks in box elder rows were reset with 

 yearling box elders. Last spring all blanks were set with year- 

 lino 1 ash, the average growth of which for the season has been 

 about two inches. 



The plat is, with one exception, the most open in the planta- 

 tion, it being easy to pass amon< the trees without touching 

 the branches. The box elders will not average more than four 

 feet high, though those of the original planting are seven feet 

 high. The poplars average about seven feet high, and only one 

 of the original setting has died- This poplar (P. certinensis) is 

 erect in habit, though not quite as upright as Lombardy. The 

 ash averages about four feet, only seven of the original setting 

 being higher than six feet. The spruces have merely become 

 established, somewhat more than half are promising, the rest 

 being in bad condition. 



The forest plats were cultivated twice the past season, the 

 last time in June. As certinensis poplar is not a dense shading 

 tree, and the remaining species have not made good growth un- 

 til this year, the weed growth has been as great in this plat 

 as im any other save the larch plat. No 'math of weeds has 

 formed, and the land is now what would be called clean by 

 many farmers. The weeds that have grown among the trees of 

 this plat are Agrostis major, Pancum capillare, and Setaria 

 viridis, grasses; Chenopodium album, lamb quarters; 

 Amarantus albus, tumble weed; Portulaca oleracea, purslane 

 or parsley; Rosa blanda, wild rose; of these the fox tail 

 grass (Set ana viridis) and purslane are most preval- 

 ent. In an adjoining plat in which the shade was dense 



