938 



Planting of Fruit Trees. [march, 



an account of several hundreds of trials made with over 2,000 

 trees in seventeen different localities and in eight different 

 counties. 



Method of Planting. — The conclusion arrived at is that the 

 precautions usually insisted upon of not bending the roots, 

 of carefully avoiding all injury to them, of spreading them 

 out— especially the fibrous roots — and of trimming any roots 

 which have been damaged, may all be neglected without 

 detriment to the tree, and, indeed, with some benefit. 



The fact that careless planting has little or no effect on the 

 subsequent growth depends on the fact that when a tree is 

 lifted for transplanting, all the delicate tips of the roots, on 

 which growth depends, are broken off, and, as these cannot 

 be re-formed, the existence of the tree can only be continued 

 by its forming new, or adventitious, roots from various parts 

 of the older roots and stems, where there are cells specially 

 modified for the purpose. If the tree is not too old, the 

 adventitious roots which are formed develop most strongly 

 from those parts of the old roots which are thickest, for the 

 store of reserve material on which their development depends 

 is greater in these regions. This reserve material also 

 accumulates at the cut end of a thick root, and generally 

 causes a multitude of adventitious roots to be formed near 

 the cut surface; but this is often not the case with long 

 straggly roots, for these may be situated so far from the body 

 of the tree that the material formed by the leaves has not 

 extended to it sufficiently to accumulate reserve material 

 there. 



The whole object to be sought in planting a tree is to secure 

 the formation of fresh rootlets from the main roots, and not to 

 preserve the fibrous roots, which, having lost their root-tips, 

 are little better than dead encumbrances. 



Ramming the Soil. — The closer the contact of the soil with 

 the roots of a transplanted tree, the more readily will these 

 adventitious roots be formed ; indeed, a tree cannot be planted 

 too firmly in the ground, and it should be thoroughly 

 rammed into the soil ; so long as the ground is not too dry, 

 the condition of the soil at the time will be immaterial. It 

 is pointed out in the Report that the correctness of this view 

 has been established by experiments with many hundreds of 



