
          NEW PLANT INTRODUCTIONS, 1916-17.

INTRODUCTORY NOTE.

This catalogue describes more than 500 species or varieties of
foreign plants, most of which have not been grown to any extent in
this country. Our familiarity with them is consequently very 
limited and they are not like standard seeds and plants, the behavior
of which can be predicted with more or less certainty.

They have been imported for trial because of some direct or 
indirect use which it is believed can be made of them by Americans.
They are introduced primarily for use by the experts of the United
States Department of Agriculture and the State experiment stations
of the country, but many of them \\all be available to such private
experimenters as have the necessary facilities and desire to test
them.

Since these plants must ultimately be grown by private individuals
before their commercial success is assured, it may be well to point
out that private experimenters who test these problematical new
plants are assisting in a very practical way in the plant-introduction
work of the country, even though they are not paid for their work.
It is often around the successful cultivation of a new introduction
by some private individual that a new plant industry begins.

The plants imported by the United States Department of Agriculture 
through this office are in most cases so little known to experimenters 
that their scientific or even common names alone would
convey little idea of their character. To distribute them under a
name simply, depending upon the experimenters to look them up in
a catalogue, entails a burden upon the investigator which often
results in his being at the close of the year ignorant of the uses of the
new plant. To enable him at any time to refresh his memory as to
the use of any one of these introductions, special labels have been
devised upon which are printed about sixty words of description.
These descriptive labels are attached to the plants when they are
sent out. This catalogue is made up of the identical descriptions
which will appear upon them.

The information on the labels consists of the Seed and Plant Introduction 
(S. P. I.) number, under which the plants are known at all
times, of the scientific name, a common name (when one has been
adopted for this country), a brief description of the plant with its
uses, and, where possible, a suggestion of the general region to which
the plant is likely to be adapted.

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