ESTABLISHING A WOODLOT 47 



rodents during the winter or of being washed out of the soil by 

 rain or thrown out by frost. Fortunately seed that matures late 

 in the year will retain its vitality over winter if properly stored. 



Method of Storing Tree Seeds over Winter. — Seeds like 

 maple, ash, birch, tulip, catalpa, locust, coffee tree, and of 

 most of the evergreen trees, will retain their vitality over win- 

 ter where they are kept cool and dry. These seeds should be 

 gathered from the trees in the fall. Many of them hang on 

 the trees for some time after they ripen, often far into the 

 winter. The seed should be placed in cloth bags and hung up 

 where it will keep dry and be exposed to the outside air and 

 also be out of reach of rodents. 



The seeds of many of our trees are apt to lose their vitality 

 if allowed to dry out over winter, such as walnut, hickory, 

 basswood; boxelder, sycamore, oak, chestnut, butternut, osage 

 orange and black cherry. These seeds must be kept moist 

 over winter by stratifying them. All seeds will keep their 

 vitality better if stratified over winter. This consists in mix- 

 ing the seed with moist sand in a box or burying them in a 

 pit in the ground. A layer of moist sand an inch or two deep 

 is placed in a box and a layer of seed is spread over it. With 

 large seed like the oak, hickory, walnut, etc., the layer of seed 

 should not be more than an inch deep, and with smaller seed 

 much less. The seed is then covered or mixed with moist 

 sand and another layer of seed spread over the sand and so 

 on until all the seed is stratified. Small seed can be folded in 

 cheese cloth and thus stratified between layers of moist sand. 

 The box should then be buried on a well drained slope, and 

 covered with about six inches of straw or leaves and the whole 

 covered with about six inches of earth. The box can be kept 

 in a cold cellar if the sand is kept moist. Freezing will not 

 injure the seed but will help to crack the shells and otherwise 

 hasten germination. Hickory, walnut, oak and other seed with 

 hard shells should especially be allowed to freeze. Where 

 stratified out of doors they should be left near the surface 



