EFFECT OF LOCATION OF SEED UPON GERMINATION 
EDWARD N,. MuNNS 
The influence of parent trees upon the size and germination of 
Jeffrey pine seeds has been shown in a previous paper." The 
marked results obtained from that work resulted in the present 
study, in which it has been sought to determine the value of seeds 
from different parts of the pine cone; and to decide what relation, 
if any, exists between the position of the seed and germination. 
The cones used were collected from Pinus Jeffreyi trees on the 
eastern slope of the Sierras in Lassen County, California, in Sep- 
tember 1919. No attempt was made to choose the trees from 
which the cones were taken, except that the trees were young and 
growing thriftily, considering the site upon which they stood. 
The cones were grouped according to size in three divisions, 
based on the gross characteristics of length, breadth, and weight. 
They were dried slowly in a room at air temperature, and as they 
opened the. seeds were extracted. The cones were divided into 
three sections of approximately equal size, to be known as the 
upper, middle, and lower portions. The seeds were carefully 
collected and graded into three classes, large, medium, and small, 
using ocular means of determining the size and comparing one 
seed’ with another. Inasmuch as a number of individuals helped 
’ to determine the size of the seed grains themselves, the individual 
variation from this source was very largely eliminated. The seeds 
were cleaned, counted, and weighed, each lot kept separately, and 
sufficient seeds to carry out the test taken at random from each 
lot. To determine the germination, a number of each lot of seeds 
were sown in cans containing a uniform depth of soil and covered 
by an approximately equal depth of sand in each case. As previ- 
ous work has shown that for Jeffrey pine a soil moisture content 
of about 15 per cent gives the best results, frequent weighings 
were made to keep the moisture content of the samples a constant at 
this figure. The result of this study is presented in tables I-VI. 
tMunns, E. N., Effect of fertilization in seed of Jeffrey pine. Plant World 
22:4. 1910. 
Botanical Gazette, vol. 72] [256 
