THE AMERICAN BOTANIST 



23 



Japan. The flora of Japan is very rich in ornamental trees and 

 shrubs and the majority of the deciduous plants and nearly all 

 the conifers have proved perfectly hardy and amenable to 

 cultivation in the gardens of New England. — From an article 

 by E. H. Wilsom in Gardeners' Chronicle of America. 



LTHOUGH the nurserymen make use of suckers and 



cuttings for the c[uicker multiplication of certain species, 

 every tree in its natural habitat produces seeds and is repro- 

 duced by them. The flowering* of our forest trees is a phe- 

 nomenon that does not, as a rule, attract attention, but their 

 fruiting or seed bearing becomes patent to anyone who visits 

 the woods in autumn. A tree has lived many years before it 

 is capable of producing seeds. The seed bearing age is different 

 in different species; thus the oak begins to bear when it is 

 between sixty and seventy years old ; the ash between forty and 

 fifty ; the birch. and sweet chestnut at twenty-five years. Some 

 produce seed every year after that period is reached, others 

 every second, third, or fifth year; others, again, bear fitfully, 

 except at intervals of from six to nine years when they produce 

 an enormous crop. Most tree seeds g*erminate in the spring' fol- 

 lowing their maturity but they are not all chstributed when ripe. 

 The birch and aspen for example retain their seeds until spring 

 and these germinate soon after they have been dispersed. 



The seed contains sufficient nutriment to feed the seedling 

 while it is developing its roots and first leaves. We can, of 

 course, go further back in starting our observations of the life 

 progress of the monarch of the forest. We can dissect the 

 insignificant greenish flower of the oak when the future seed, 

 the acorn, is but a single cell, a tiny bag filled with protoplasm. 

 From that early stage to the period when the tree is first ripe 

 for conversion into timber, we span a century and a half — 



REPRODUCTION IN TREES 



