32 SHADE LN" COFFEE CULTUEE. 



better methods were .seen, particularly in the neighborhood of Maya- 

 griez, coffee is almost universally grown as a half -wild culture, either 

 under heavy shade or so badly crowded with other vegetation that 

 properly developed trees are seldom to be found. It can scarcely be 

 charged that the Porto Rican method of coffee culture is entirel} 7 the 

 result of carelessness and lack of knowledge, since it had an apparent 

 advantage in the fact that it formerly produced returns with a mini- 

 mum expenditure for labor, and made no other demand on the planter s 

 purse. The deeper the shade the less the growth of grass, weeds, or 

 underbrush, and the less necessity even of cleaning with a cutlass; 

 but this discouragement of growth affects the coffee as well as other 

 vegetation, so that few plantations yield more than a third of what 

 would be an ordinary crop under open culture, although an attempt 

 has been made to counteract by close planting the evil effects of too 

 much shade. Trees are set without regularity, often within a few 

 inches of each other. Sometimes two seedlings are put in the same 

 hole, but the weaker is not cut out, and both are left to crowd each 

 other and their neighbors four or five feet away. The tendencies of 

 other countries practicing open culture have generally been in the 

 direction of wider and wider planting, from 4 to 6 meters being the 

 prevailing distance in Brazil. 



When it is remembered that the chemical activity and resulting pro- 

 ductiveness of a plant is conditioned directly on the amount of its leaf 

 surface, it will be understood that the shade habit of growth is incom- 

 patible with good agriculture or a maximum yield. Under heavy 

 shade the tendency is always in the direction of the formation of 

 a single layer, so to speak, of leaves, below which little or nothing 

 grows. The limbs and smaller branches of the tree, instead of being 

 lined with rows of large and healthy leaves, are bare nearly to the tips, 

 and the berries are borne singly or in small clusters instead of crowded 

 in bunches of a dozen or more (PL VIII). 



REMOVAL OF SHAD^ 



It is a well-known fact that, even with plants which grow normally 

 exposed to full sunlight, seedlings, sprouts, or cuttings which have 

 been stored or shipped in the dark are often seriously injured or 

 killed outright by being placed in an open situation without having 

 an opportunity to become gradually accustomed to the light. Thus 

 it is entirely possible that coffee trees accustomed to dense shade like 

 that customaiy in Porto Rico would be disastrously affected by sud- 

 den exposure like that afforded by the hurricane of August 8, 1899, 

 which in many plantations left few of the larger shade trees standing. 

 As generally happens when a forest is cut away, the exposed under- 

 growth ceases to thrive, and even large trees left standing as indi- 

 viduals often die, although belonging to species which grow well when 



