58 PEACTICAL FOKESTET. 



CHAPTER IX. 

 SEEDLINGS OF CONIFERS. 



A large proportion of the cone-bearing trees are ever- 

 greens, but there are a few, as the larch, and taxodiums, 

 that are deciduous, casting their leaves in the autumn 

 when fully ripe, or touched by frost. In propagating 

 from seed, all require essentially the same treatment, 

 which is, however, quite different from the ordinary 

 deciduous class already referred to. While the seeds of 

 coniferae are really no more delicate, or their germination 

 more uncertain than other kinds of tree seeds, still, the 

 seedlings require more care from the time they appear 

 above ground, until they are transplanted to the field or 

 nursery rows. Young seedlings of coniferse, that spring 

 up in the forests, where there is deeper shade than that 

 which surrounds those of deciduous trees, are quite 

 sensitive to light, temperature, conditions of soil, and 

 atmosphere, as regards moisture. As a rule, all seeds of 

 conifers should be sown where the young plants can be 

 protected from the constant direct rays of the sun for 

 the first few weeks of their existence, and partial shade 

 is desirable throughout the entire first season. 



Sometimes stakes are driven by the sides of the beds, 

 on which poles are placed to form a support for a cover- 

 ing of thin cloth, or of evergreen boughs where they can 

 be obtained, but in windy locations such temporary 

 structures are liable to be blown down, destroying the 

 plants underneath them. Besides the winds sweep over 

 the surface of the seed-bed dispelling the surface 

 moistures, which must be made good by liberal and 

 judicious waterings, or the seedlings soon perish. Large 

 numbers of seedlings are raised, it is true, under such 

 arrangements in favorable situations, but a better pro- 



