3 8o 



Garden and Forest. 



[Number 501. 



appeared, and the largest tree in the open scattered groves 

 near the shores of Lake Bennett and Lake Linderman 

 is a Fir (Abies lasiocarpa). With it grow stunted White 

 Spruces (Picea alba), which in greater or lesser abundance 

 and mingled with Balsam Poplars, Birches and Alders are 

 scattered over the basins of the Yukon and its tributaries for 

 hundreds of miles, and finally reach the Pacific coast on 

 Kotzebue Sound within the Arctic Circle, and nearly five 

 degrees north of Kadiak Island, where the forests of south- 

 eastern Alaska give way to a growth of Grasses and low 

 Alders and Willows. 



Trees cannot be cut lawfully in Alaska for tim- 

 ber or fuel, for there is no law which permits the 

 sales of stumpage or timber-lands, and no law relating 

 in any way to the forest but the one which forbids 

 all shipment of wood from the territory. There are a few 

 sawmills in Alaska, however, and the number will soon be 

 increased, and a large quantity of fire-wood is consumed 

 at the salmon canneries and quartz mines, but the Govern- 

 ment gets nothing for it, and is powerless to prevent 

 damage to the public domain. Fortunately, the climate of 

 south-eastern Alaska is so humid that forest fires are rare, 

 and never very destructive, and reproduction is sure and 

 rapid. These forests, therefore, even with American 

 methods, will not soon or easily be destroyed ; and here 

 and to the southward along the coast ranges and islands of 

 British Columbia through nine degrees of latitude from 

 Cross Sound, at the north of Chicagof Island, to the Straits 

 of Fuca is now the greatest continuous body of coniferous 

 timber in the world, almost unmarked as yet by the axe, 

 safe from fire and of easy access, from which the world 

 will be able to draw great stores of material when the Red- 

 woods and Douglas Spruces of the south have fallen, and 

 our south-Atlantic and Gulf-shore pineries are only dim 

 memories. 



Pollen-bearing vs. Plant Vigor. 



IN Garden and Forest, vol. x., page 38, an article with 

 the above title recorded some experiments made at 

 Cornell University during 1895-6. Other researches and 

 tests have since been brought to a close and have thrown 

 some further light upon the subject. 



The idea that pollen production is more or less an ex- 

 haustive process has gained many adherents who maintain 

 that, because, in animals, differences favorable to man 

 appear after the operations of spaying and castration, it 

 therefore follows that, in plants, similar results will also 

 appear if the plants do not have to produce both pollen and 

 seed or fruit. In proof of this theory the favorite example 

 cited is the case of the Strawberry, in which it is claimed, 

 and apparently with justice, that the pistillate varieties are 

 more productive than the so-called staminates or hermaph- 

 rodites, which, in addition to the production of fruit, also 

 produce pollen. And this fact is considered sufficient to 

 account for the lightness of the crop borne by the stami- 

 nate varieties. But, as will be seen later, it is just as prob- 

 able thatthe unproductiveness of these hermaphrodites is the 

 result of the theory they are now cited as examples to prove. 



Pollen production undoubtedly does demand much of 

 the plant's energy since it has been ascertained by analysis 

 that this substance compares in complexity of composition 

 with the seed. De Planta, Przybytek, Famintzin and Snyder 

 have found the following substances in various kinds of 

 pollen : Water, globulin, peptone, guanin, hypoxanthin, 

 amides, saccharose, starch, fatty acids, cholestrine, resin- 

 ous and waxy substances, coloring matters, potash, mag- 

 nesium, calcium, phosphorus, sulphur, chlorine, iron, 

 aluminium and manganese in varying quantities. Snyder's 

 analyses of corn anthers after the shedding of the pollen, 

 show much the same substances to be present in these 

 empty husks. It is, therefore, easy to believe that large 

 quantities of plant-food are required to produce these parts. 

 Snyder remarks that if we allow "corn to be planted three 

 feet six inches apart each way, and three stalks to the hill " 



there would be 6.01 pounds of nitrogen alone per acre, 

 " which makes the loss of nitrogen to the plant very con- 

 siderable, equal to a very liberal application of nitrogen in 

 the form of commercial fertilizers." But is this, strictly 

 speaking, a loss? Has not the plant made provision for 

 this apparent waste ? These are questions that the experi- 

 ments were conducted to test. 



The primary office of pollen is to fertilize the ovules for 

 the perpetuation of the species by seed. Since this fertili- 

 zation depends upon such precarious agents as insects and 

 the wind, plants which tended to produce even slightly 

 more pollen than their fellows stood just that much better 

 chance of perpetuating their characters — of having off- 

 spring. Allow this accidental trait to be perpetuated and 

 augmented by heredity and the production of pollen be- 

 comes in time, as in the case of staminate dioecious plants, 

 apparently the sole object of its existence. But in countless 

 cases pollen is borne by the individual which also bears 

 the fruit apparently without lessening the production of the 

 latter, and even though the proportion of pollen approaches 

 the highest figures of the dioecious males. Instances are 

 recorded of Pine pollen being swept in quantity from the 

 decks of vessels out of sight of land, and, again, of the 

 beaches of our inland lakes and streams being yellowed by 

 it. After many careful computations upon corn ovules 

 and pollen grains, a writer finds that "allowing two ears of 

 one thousand kernels each, to each plant (a very high 

 estimate) there are still nine thousand pollen grains for 

 every ovule to be fertilized." Darwin also records some 

 interesting figures upon this point in his Cross and Self- 

 fertilization. 



The apparently great waste of energy in Corn-pollen 

 production led to the apparently common practice in the 

 last century of detasseling. This is recorded in The New 

 England Farmer, 1797. Detasseling experiments have 

 been tried at several of the experiment stations with con- 

 tradictory results. In brief, it may be said that when the 

 tassel was removed just as it appeared and before it had 

 any chance to develop its pollen, there was sometimes a 

 gain in the crop, but that when it was removed after the 

 pollen began to shed there was no such gain. 



Concerning the Strawberry so much has been said and 

 written apparently without carefully conducted experi- 

 ments, and by persons of more or less biased opinion, that 

 the greater productivity of the pistillate varieties seems to 

 be due to their sex, and even though the statements might 

 be proved false, years would have to elapse before the 

 popular mind could be shaken in its belief. After a careful 

 compilation of all apparently reliable data obtainable from • 

 the various experiment-station reports and bulletins, it 

 must be confessed that the pistillate varieties average 

 highe.r than the staminates. This is found to be true no 

 matter by what method the productiveness is judged, 

 popular estimation, the scale of ten, weight or volume of 

 crop, or of a certain number of berries. In only a very few 

 instances do the individual staminates exceed the pistil- 

 lates. These varieties are all of recent introduction. This 

 excess never appears when a large number of each class 

 are compared and calculated upon. Everything seems to 

 warrant popular opinion. But it is believed that ever since 

 Keens in England, and Longworth in America, impressed 

 upon the horticultural public the importance of mixing 

 hermaphrodite plants with the pistillate varieties to make 

 the latter more productive, the staminate sorts have not 

 had their due. The fact that the pistillates were productive 

 when in proximity to the staminates was only a step to the 

 theory that they were, per se, more productive, and that 

 the ideal Strawberry must be a pistillate. It is true that the 

 greater number of our more productive market sorts are 

 pistillate, but it is interesting to note that the recently 

 introduced staminates are close upon them. One reason 

 that the staminates average so low is (hat a larger number 

 of the old staminate varieties are retained than is the case 

 with the pistillates, which are kept upon the move, so to 

 speak. It is also true in this connection that the older 



