130 



THE NEW FORESTRY. 



41 $• 



In all seedling forest trees the tap-root dives straight down 

 into the earth, if it can get, and is much longer than the top 

 of the tree. Figure 1 is a fair example. It is six inches 

 long from the top of the tuft of leaves to the extremity 

 of the root, and one inch, at least, was lost in the. lifting — 

 the root being actually six inches longer than the top. 

 The second year the disproportion increases, the top 

 usually developing a short node of leaves of the normal size, 

 while the tap-root will often be eighteen inches long and the 

 tendency still downwards. After this the disparity decreases 

 rapidly ; but the tree has got a hold of the ground that the 

 transplanted tree never acquires. In hard-woods the roots of 

 young trees go much deeper. In a permeable soil we have 

 seen two-year-old seedling oaks with perfectly straight tap- 

 roots four feet long when the tree top did not exceed eighteen 

 inches in height. At the end of the second year the young 

 plant, Figure I, would, in the usual course, be transplanted, 

 and have its long maiden root shortened considerably. In 

 the usual transplanting operation, an L-shaped furrow is made 

 in the soil, against a tightly stretched line, and in this furrow 



the young plant, by the wrong 

 method, Fig. 2, is set with 

 the lower portion of its roots 

 bent outwards at right angles 

 to the upper portion, and cor- 

 responding with the section of 

 the furrow ; the root is then 

 covered in, and so on with all 

 the plants in the row, and every 

 row, all the roots in the plot 

 pointing in the same direction. 

 When the tree is lifted the 

 second time, perhaps two years 

 later, to be again transplanted, 

 the root has lost its natural 

 shape and become permanently 

 " set " in the form in which it 

 was bent in the furrow. This 

 goes on for several years till the 

 tree is old enough to go out, 

 when it becomes like Fig. 3 — 

 another portrait of a Corsican 

 fir from among a number of the 

 Fig. 3. Transplanted Tree. same shape in a large nursery 



Wrong Root Form. 



W^^"~ 



GROUND 

 LINE. 



Fig. 



Section of Furrow. 



Wrong Way. 

 Nursery Transplanting. 



