
          PLANT INTRODUCTIONS

Experimenters are particularly requested to read this 
Introductory Note

THIS LIST describes many species and varieties of newly introduced 
foreign plants which have not been widely tested in this country. 
Our knowledge of them, consequently, is very limited and we 
cannot predict their behavior with any degree of certainty.

These plants have been imported because of some direct or indirect 
use which it is thought can be made of them. They are first 
placed at the disposal of Experimenters of the United States Department 
of Agriculture and the State Experiment Stations of the country, 
but many of them will be available to such private experimenters as 
have the necessary facilities and desire to test them. Since these 
plants must be grown by private individuals before their commercial 
value is determined, experimenters who test them are assisting in a 
very practical way in the plant introduction work of the country. A 
new plant industry often arises through the success of some private 
individual who proves that an introduced plant will grow in his region 
and finds a use for its product.

The List is sent to those who have qualified as Experimenters 
with the Office of Foreign Seed and Plant Introduction and have indicated 
their willingness to receive and care for the material sent to 
them for experimental planting in their region. The number of plants 
that can be propagated from an introduction is usually limited and as 
it is desired to test each species over as wide a range as possible 
in order to determine its adaptability to soil and climatic conditions, 
each Experimenter is usually sent a single plant under any one 
introduction number, and often, because of the small number of plants 
available, it is found impossible to send him any of the particular 
kinds for which he asks.

These plants are placed in the hands of Experimenters with the 
understanding that they will be given unusual attention, and that the Experimenter 
will report to this Office on their behavior and their apparent 
value in his community. Not only have these Introduced Plants 
cost a great deal of money, but they also have involved, in many 
cases, dangers and hardships to our Agricultural Explorers sent out 
to find them. Nothing is more disheartening to the man who has risked 
his life in obtaining some new and valuable plant than to find on 
his return to America that the Experimenter to whom the plant was 
sent did not care enough for it even to keep the label attached to 
the plant or to prevent its being choked by weeds.

While to the Experimenter some of these plants may seem to be of 
little value, final judgment upon them should be reserved until they 
have been given a thorough trial. Even to know that an introduced 
        