﻿INVENTORY OF SEEDS AND PLANTS IMPORTED 

 BY THE OFFICE OF FOREIGN SEED AND PLANT 

 INTRODUCTION DURING THE PERIOD FROM 

 OCTOBER 1 TO DECEMBER 31, 1916 (NO. 49; NOS. 

 43391 TO 43979). 



INTRODUCTORY STATEMENT. 



This inventory is the third to be issued since the declaration of 

 war in April, 1917, and although it covers only 588 numbers it in- 

 cludes a very considerable range of new plants, some of which are 

 not only new to this country as crop plants, but appear to be new 

 to science. 



It is my sad task to record in this inventory the death of our 

 agricultural explorer, Frank 1ST. Meyer, whose unique and interesting 

 descriptions of plants, particularly from China, Siberia, and Turke- 

 stan, have formed for the past 10 years so important a part of the 

 reading matter of these inventories. 



The particulars regarding Mr. Meyer's death will probably never 

 be known. The cabled advices show that he fell overboard into the 

 Yangtze River on the evening of June 1, 1919, from the steamer 

 Feng Yang Mane while en route from Hankow to Shanghai and that 

 his body was discovered 30 miles above the town of Wuhu, near 

 Nanking. The facts that his wanderings in search of plants are 

 over and his contributions to these inventories at an end are chroni- 

 cled with great regret. It is perhaps a significant coincidence that 

 his only contribution to this number is a weeping variety (No. 43791) 

 of the dry-land elm, which was one of his substantial additions to 

 our list of useful trees. 



In this inventory are included accounts of some of Wilson Pope- 

 noe's interesting discoveries in Guatemala, where, as an agricultural 

 explorer for the Office of Foreign Seed and Plant Introduction of the 

 Bureau of Plant Industry, he spent over 16 months, traveling more 

 than 2,000 miles on horseback over the Guatemalan highlands, in 

 search, primarily, of promising seedlings of the thick-skinned Guate- 

 malan race of avocado. 



Perhaps nothing that has occurred in recent years could more 

 strongly emphasize the fact that the horticulturists of southern Cali- 

 fornia and southern Florida are pioneering in the field of tropical 

 horticulture than this search for seedling avocados in Guatemala; 

 and it is a striking spectacle that one country in the very beginning 

 of a plant industry is hunting for promising seedlings in another 

 where that industry, still on a seedling basis, is one of the main 

 sources of food. In Guatemala there does not appear to be a single 



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