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THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE 



THE EXPLORER MEYER WITH A BRANCH OE JUJUBE IN HIS HAND 



In 1906, when Meyer first saw orchards of this new fruit in China, he wondered if the 

 trees would grow in America. He lived to learn that the trees not only would flourish, but 

 would bear abundantly in this country, and he was gathering bud wood of all the horticul- 

 tural varieties which he could find (see pages 72 and 74). 



to them to know about the little Chinese 

 chestnut trees which Meyer has intro- 

 duced and which are very resistant to 

 the chestnut-bark disease. While this 

 Chinese chestnut will not take the place 

 of the American chestnut as a timber 

 tree, we may expect from it an abundance 

 of good, sweet chestnuts. 



mkyer's spinach substitute 



In our hot summers, spinach, that most 

 popular of vegetables, does not grow, but 

 Mr. J. B. Norton, through careful selec- 

 tion, has produced a strain, which he calls 

 "Manchuria," from seed which Meyer 

 gathered in Manchuria. 



Guarding, as it were, the tomb of the 

 greal Confucius, stands a century-old 

 tree of the Chinese pistache. In summer 

 it casts a dense shade, and in autumn its 

 scarlet foliage makes the landscape bril- 

 liant, like the oaks in the Berkshires. 

 There is now an avenue of these superb 



trees forming the entrance to our Chico 

 Plant Introduction Garden, and it has 

 already begun to furnish ample seed sup- 

 plies to plant the country (see page 64). 



The white-barked pine, one of the 

 most striking landscape trees of China, 

 its brilliant white trunk contrasting with 

 its dark-green needles, we have scattered 

 by the hundreds through the drier re- 

 gions of this country from large quanti- 

 ties of seed which Meyer secured. One 

 of them is growing over the grave of the 

 most enthusiastic plant lover of all of 

 our diplomats, the late W. W. Rockhill, 

 U. S. Minister to China (see page 70). 



Imagine the old age which such a 

 hunter as Meyer might have had when 

 in place of fading memories of forest 

 encounters he could put his hands upon 

 the trunks of great trees grown from 

 tiny seeds which he had collected in his 

 travels as a young man, or see with fail- 

 ing eyesight the masses of flowers pro- 





