b SEEDS AND PLANTS IMPORTED. 



Mr. Frank N. Mej 7 er, who was sent out to northern China in the summer 

 of 1905 and who has been exploring the remarkable plant regions of 

 the mountains north and west of Peking. His finds, coming as they 

 do from a region with as severe a winter as that of the Middle States, 

 will surely be, we believe, valuable to plant growers over a wide 

 range of territory. In fact, the preliminary trials that have been 

 made with these North Chinese plants in this country show that as a 

 rule they have a degree of hardiness and resistance to disease which 

 their close relatives from Japan, now so abundantly represented in 

 our gardens and fields, do not possess. Mr. Meyer's explorations have 

 been made into different places, difficult and sometimes dangerous of 

 access, and at no little sacrifice of personal comfort and risk to his 

 health and safety. The collections cover a wide range of things for 

 which there is a demand already created by breeding, grafting, and 

 other experiments which have been carried on in this country during 

 the past decade. The material sent in is now in process of propaga- 

 tion, and as soon as ready will be sent out to experimenters. 



Other collections worthy of notice are a number of new sorghums 

 from tropical Africa, the home of the sorghum plant; a collection of 

 the interesting new wet-land root crop, the yautia, from Porto Rico; 

 some interesting new forms of potato from Bolivia; leguminous plants 

 for breeding as fodder producers, collected from various parts of the 

 world; forage and fodder grasses in large numbers from many 

 different foreign countries; the Queensland nut Macadamia, which is 

 a possibility for California; the South China soap tree, which has 

 recently come into some prominence in Algeria as a source of saponin, 

 a commercial product used in the manufacture of soaps; a collection 

 of hardy grass and forage plant seed from the Austrian Alpine garden 

 at an altitude of 5,700 feet; three new pistache species for breeding 

 and for stocks on which to graft the ordinary edible variety of this 

 nut, from the borders of Afghanistan, North China, and northern 

 Persia; a collection of West Indian yams, promising possibilities as 

 a change from the monotony of the Irish potato; a number of new 

 Mexican apricots for the fruit-growing areas of Texas and the Gulf 

 States; and a very important collection of the edible-fruited and 

 fodder cacti, made by the cactus expert of the Department, Dr. David 

 Griffiths, who has made experimental plantings of these most inter- 

 esting plants in the dry regions of the Southwest. 



David Fairchild, 

 Agricultural Explorer in Charge 



Office of Seed and Plant Introduction, 



Washington, D. <7., April 12, 1907. 



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