1910. 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER 
3 
THE “STUNT” IN PEACH NURSERY TREES. 
A Serious Trouble and Its Causes. 
Can Mr. E. S. Black or some other able authority tell 
me how best to fight an insect which this year ate my 
nursery peach stock? Its first appearance was noted 
about mid-July, after very hot weather. Noticing the 
trees which were budded the previous September, as 
being of unusual appearance, I examined them, to find 
that the terminal bud was eaten out and the growth 
consequently stopped. They started again, and of course 
quite bushy, but the insect was always active, especially 
during very hot days, continuing in evidence until late 
September. It also worked in the Spring; I set stocks 
of about 12,000; of . these apparently none escaped. 
Further scrutiny also revealed their work on one and 
two-year-old trees. I cannot say that I ever found the 
guilty one on the job, for different flies and beetles were 
seen, but none in very great numbers, but I think the 
damage was caused by a small black beetle about the 
size of the potato flea-beetle. About September 1 I 
sprayed with arsenate of lead, but on account of their way 
of working, eating their way down in the bud and tender 
growth, it is hard to poison. I also noticed that its 
ravages were local, as stock two and three miles away 
was unaffected. Might I expect a recurrence of this pest 
next year? If so. which is the best way to fight it? 
St. Catherines, Ont. h. s. 
been killed off at six and eight inches, and had sent 
out laterals and some of these had been already tipped. 
In December I saw this nursery again and it was a 
sorry sight. Gaps were everywhere, some 20,000 trees 
having been taken out, and most of the balance were 
bushes rather than trees. Some of these bushes were 
entirely from the seedling, the budded variety having 
been killed off. The value of this nurserv has been 
reduced by at least 50 per cent, and it will probably 
scarcely bring back expenses. This is the worst case 
known to me, but I have seen otheu not much better. 
“As to remedial measures, the outlook is not espe¬ 
cially promising. Insecticides as against an insect 
of this kind are unsatisfactory, and the only real 
indication is given by the fact that it is a dry weather 
form and disappears after the first soaking rain. Thb 
suggestion is, then, that the trees be irrigated or other¬ 
wise watered if at all possible, and that the early 
growth be stimulated so as to get the trees to salable 
size before the insect can harm them. In a rainy 
season no especial harm need be apprehended.” 
In 1900 we began spraying our beds with kerosene 
emulsion, commencing as soon as we had the suckers 
up to three years ago, when I quit the business. 
From these facts and another fact that the stunt 
always seemed worse in cold wet seasons and on 
heavy undrained flat spots, while on high well-drained 
gravelly or light land in the same rows no stunt 
appeared, I came to the conclusion that the cause was 
more from unsuitable soil and lack of lime, phosphoric 
acid and potash in the soil than fronj any damage by 
insect. After receiving this question from H. S. I 
wrote to Dr. Smith about my views of the cause as 
stated, and received the following reply: 
“The kind of stunt that you refer to is undoubtedly 
caused as you suggest by lack of proper growing 
condition; but that was not the cause with the out¬ 
break, which I investigated and reported upon several 
years ago. There I found, the insects actually at work 
on the trees, and found the injury that they had 
caused. More than that, conditions were tolerably 
even throughout the fields that were examined, and 
it was only where these insects were found feeding 
that any stunt appeared. Again, on the same plant 
the main trunk would have the tip stunted, while the 
branches were growing luxuriantly. In fact, the effect 
If H. S. has been growing peach 
nurseries for any length of time, and 
never ran across the “stunt in his 
trees before, he is a very fortunate 
grower. Since 186S I have been more 
or less connected with the growing of 
peach trees, (I am not at present in 
the business) and some years this 
“stunt” has often about ruined our 
whole nurseries. Some years it would 
show only in spots where the land was 
heavy, flat or wet, while on the higher 
ground in the same nursery the trees 
would grow as straight as an arrow. 
All kinds of theories were advanced 
as to the cause of it, and every theory 
seemed to be exploded by the next 
attack of it, as the contrary conditions 
were in evidence to what had supposed¬ 
ly been the previous cause for it. Every 
peach nurseryman knows that ail kinds 
of insects show themselves wnen the 
trees are disturbed in the nursery row, 
and no one of them seems to be doing 
any perceivable damage. 
In 1891 a block of 150,000 buds were 
so badly stunted that not 5,000 salable 
trees were taken out of it, and another 
block a long distance from it was so 
badly injured that the trees had to be 
sold at about half price, as they were 
bushy and crooked. We at first at¬ 
tributed the cause to a hard freeze on 
the 12th and 13th of May, when the 
buds were four to six inches high and 
the suckers nearly 10 inches high, but 
a block of June buds were also stunted, 
and of course they were not frozen, as 
they were not budded until the latter 
part of June. The following year no 
more of it appeared in our nurseries 
than usual, and while we always clung 
to the theory of injury by insects, so 
many other conditions seemed to point 
toward soil and weather that we could 
never fully decide on the real cause. 
In 1889 Dr. John B. Smith, our State 
Entomologist, pronounced it the work 
of a small black thrips, and in a paper 
on insects read before the New Jersey 
State Horticultural Society, January. 
1900, referred to the damage done by 
them in the following language: 
“Nursery peach stock has been very seriously affected 
by a little species of thrips which I found for the 
first time this season, though I have known of the 
injuries caused for some years. Ever since the in¬ 
spection of nurseries became a practice nurserymen 
have spoken of something that killed the tips of the 
young trees when they were a foot or so high and 
stunted them. The questions were always asked long 
after all trace of the cause had disappeared, and not 
until this Summer did a nurseryman call upon me in 
June while the insects were actually at work. I found 
then that in the very heart of the plant were one or 
more examples of a very small black thrips, yellow 
before it was winged, and that these scraped and 
sucked the juices in the most vital portion of the 
shoot. This was just at the tail end of the long 
Spring drought, and a week afterward heavy rains 
having occurred the insects had disappeared com¬ 
pletely, leaving as signs of their former presence 
stunted and crippled trees. It seems that in the 
nursery the insects had begun work almost as soon 
as the buds started and some shoots never became 
more than two or three inches long before they died 
and the tree with them. In other cases the tip had 
Ill oLHllC CclSCS YYclS IU lllIUYV 
into a bush-like form. This particular 
injury upon which I reported was 
positively due to insect work. The 
other sort of stunt I have observed 
and do observe every year, and as to 
that your diagnosis is entirely correct. 
It is only in exceptional years that this 
insect makes its appearance, and I 
have not personally found it trouble¬ 
some in nurseries for several years 
past. Practically, my reply is that there 
are two kinds of stunt; that you are 
correct in your explanation of one 
kind; but that there is another much 
rarer, which is caused by a thrips.” 
e. s. BLACK. 
A GREAT CALIFORNIA REDWOOD STUMP. Fig. 2 
stripped off, and continuing it every week until the 
end of July, and only found a few trees that showed 
any signs of the stunt, and then not bad enough to 
hurt in any way the shape or value of the tree. A 
grower of peach trees about 10 miles from us never 
had the stunt to do any damage to his trees. He 
practised the following method of fertilizing his trees: 
Fie tried to have sod land to plant his pits in, and as 
soon as seedlings stopped growing after budding 
season, the nursery was broadcast with caustic lime 
at the rate of 75 to 100 bushels of the fresh slaked 
lime per acre, and at the same time he applied a heavy 
dressing of bone meal and muriate of potash. We 
adopted the same plan, planting pits in October or 
early part of November, and after budding season 
we applied 1,000 pounds of bone meal and 500 pounds 
muriate of potash, and about 100 bushels of fresh 
slaked lime per acre, and without spraying with the 
kerosene emulsion we had no trouble with the stunt. 
We then began systematically to apply lime to all of 
our land, and then planted pits in Fall on sod, and 
left out the bone and muriate, except as it was used 
for crops that preceded peach nurseries, and never 
were troubled with the stunt to any damaging extent 
REDWOOD TREES OF 
CALIFORNIA. 
These trees are known as Sequoia 
sempervirens, the name being given 
them in honor of “Sequoyah,” a noted 
and learned Cherokee Indian, inventor 
of an alphabet, or letters for his tribe. 
The wood is the most valuable of the 
California timber trees, and in general 
appearance closely resembles the “big 
trees” of Calaveras County, growing 
on the slopes of the Sierra Nevada 
range, which are its only rivals in size. 
The wood is soft, easily worked, 
straight grain, and susceptible of a 
;i, ie finish and high polish, rich, brown¬ 
ish red in color • it is in much demand 
for shingles, railroad ties, fence-posts 
and rails, and in all conditions where 
the wood is exposed to the elements 
or comes in contact with the soil or 
dampness. It is extremely valuable 
for wine butts. It is estimated that 
each of these largest trees contains as 
much lumber as is ordinarily grown 
on 15 or 20 acres of timber land. 
The redwood section shown in Fig. 
2, now stands on the Agricultural 
Grounds in Washington, D. C. The 
tree was originally 300 feet high, and 
one of the largest of its kind, being 81 
feet in circumference. It was secured 
for the Columbian Exposition in Chi¬ 
cago, and named after General Noble, 
then Secretary of the Interior. The portion intended 
for exhibition was hollowed out and divided into 46 
sections, the largest of which weighed over four tons; 
they were hauled by teams of 16 mules over a rough 
road 60 miles long from Monson, Cal., to the nearest 
railway station. It required eleven platform cars to 
transport it to Chicago. The total expense of cutting 
down the tree, hollowing out, dividing into sections, 
getting it to railway station, and then to Chicago 
amounted to $10,475. 
Just previous to the expiration of President Roose¬ 
velt’s term of office, he signed the bill for the creation 
of the “Calaveras National Forest,” California, thus 
completing the legislation which saves for all time 
the most famous grove of trees in the world. This 
act was the culmination of efforts extending over 
the last nine years. No Treasury appropriation was 
needed to carry out the provisions of the act, as the 
owner of the Big Tree Groves, Robert B. Whiteside, 
of Duluth, Minn., received in exchange therefor, 
stumpage of equal value on other forest land owned 
by the Government. The Sequoia giea'ntea, as these 
trees are called, are the oldest living things in the 
world. Estimates made from cross sections of some 
of those which have fallen show that the mature trees 
are over 4,000 years old; the bark on the larger trees 
averages two feet in thickness, and the trees are so 
hardy that forest fires produce almost no effect on 
them. Indeed, they are almost indestructible except 
by man. A. d. dart. 
