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THE AMERICAN BOTANIST 



mercial importance when it concerns a crop, such as tobacco, 

 which is sold at a good round price per pound. If the tobacco 

 grower picks the leaves from his plant and dries them instead 

 of cutting down and dr3'ing the plant in the usual way, he will 

 have possibly fifteen per cent more tobacco by weight. The 

 question as to which procedure is the best depends entirely on 

 whether the added weight will produce enough revenue to pay 

 for the extra cost of handling in the new way and leave a profit 

 over, but it is the solution of such problems as these that make 

 all the difference between automobiles or Fords for Uncle Silas. 



Udo. — Udo is a Japanese plant of the ginseng family 

 known to botanists as Aralia cor data and therefore closely re- 

 lated to our pettymorel or wild spikenard { A. racemosa) . It 

 is not unlike our own species of Aralia, and has been used as a 

 spring vegetable in Japan for a long time. The young shoots 

 are blanched and eaten much as sea kale (Crambe inaritiina) 

 is with us. For some years the United States Government has 

 been endeavoring to introduce udo into cultivation, but thus 

 far with indifferent success, possibly because the flavor is some- 

 what different from that of the other veg'etables which we use 

 in a similar way. Eaten raw the stems have a faint suggestion 

 of turpentine and a liking for the plant may have to be ac- 

 quired. The flavor, however, is no more pronounced than that 

 of parsnip, or celery, and cooking is said to improve or modify 

 it. Udo is somewhat larger than the wild spikenard and some- 

 times reaches a height of ten feet. Like our species it is an 

 herbaceous perennial and dies down to the earth in fall. \Mien 

 the young shoots appear in spring they are blanched by heaping 

 the soil around them or covering them with drain tiles. The 

 edible portions are from twelve to eighteen inches long and 

 nearly an inch and a half thick. Though the plant is but slowly 

 becoming known, it is said to be steadily growing in favor and 

 a few truck gardeners are now growing it on a commercial 

 scale. One of its advantages is that it is ready in spring before 



