420 Pomona College Journal of Economic Botany 



plants; and the impetus gained from their small importation of a quarter 

 century ago, has been such that one private concern, alone, imported 15,000 

 oflf-shoots, in the summer of 1913, for commercial planting in and about the 

 Colorado Desert. These shoots, which weigh anywhere from ten to fifty 

 pounds, are severed from the parent tree by means of heavy chisels made 

 especially for the purpose. After painting the severed butt-ends of the 

 shoots, their tops are trimmed and the whole plant is wrapped and sewed 

 in a covering of j^alm fiber or biirlap, preparatory to shipment. They are 



Plate 174. There are about 15,000 off-shoots in this one nursery field in which the 

 planters are still at work. The young palms are leaned slightly toward 

 the prevailing wind, because it is thought that they will thus grow 

 straighter; the rows are four feet apart, with the plants three feet apart 

 in the rows. 



frequently packed in boxes to facilitate handling on their long journey 

 during which they must be kept sufficiently moist to prevent excessive drying, 

 but not so damp as to encourage mould or rot. At the end of their journey, 

 the Department of Agriculture requires that they be immersed for two 

 different periods of fifteen nunutes each in an insecticide of given formula 

 that is a guaranteed "kill-all-but-the-plant." They must then be planted 

 in nursery form in an isolated place at least one thousand feet from any 

 other date palms where they have to serve a year's sentence of quarantine 



