174 
THE NATIONAL NURSERYMAN 
EVERGREENS EUR NEW YORK STATE 
The best evergreen trees for home grounds in New 
York, according to Professor R. W. Curtis of the land¬ 
scape art department of Cornell, are white pine, red pine 
or Norway pine, and hemlock. All three of these are na¬ 
tive and are generally adapted to local conditions. While 
it is stated that the hemlock is usually the most expen¬ 
sive to buy and has the slowest growth, yet it has the 
linest foliage and most graceful habit of any of the eas¬ 
tern evergreens. When clipped it makes the best ever¬ 
green hedge that can be grown. 
Among the evergreens which have been introduced 
from abroad or from distant points in this country, Aus¬ 
trian pine is tough and long-lived, but is held to be rather 
too stiff, dull, and somber for home grounds. Scotch 
pine is hardy, rapid-growing, and picturesque, but has a 
comparatively short life. Professor Curtis says also that 
spruces and firs should be used sparingly because they 
are distinctly conical in shape, and therefore too con¬ 
spicuous and lormal for the ordinary small home place. 
If a too-emphatic color is added to the emphatic form, as 
in the Colorado blue spruce, the result, according to 
Professor Curtis, is a blue exclamation point on the front 
lawn. The eye can not get away from it. Instead of 
helping to make a quiet, harmonious frame for the house, 
which is the center of the picture, the blue spruce stands 
out and says “look at me.” It is unfortunate, he says, 
that this tree has been so widely advertised and planted. 
Another drawback, in addition to that of being con¬ 
spicuous, is that it is short-lived when planted in the east. 
Some which were set out in Massachusetts thirty years 
ago are losing their lower limbs and beginning to go 
back. 
Norway spruce is another tree that has been too much 
planted, and it has no permanent value in America as an 
ornamental. It has been introduced from Europe and 
planted almost everywhere, but trees planted from thirty 
to forty years ago are now beginning to deteriorate. In 
addition to its short life, it is too somber and funereal to 
be a cheerful tree companion for home planting. The 
fact that the Norway spruce is unsuited to the eastern 
United States bears out the general statement which hor¬ 
ticulturists make about plants introduced from western 
Europe. They maintain as a general thing that the east¬ 
ern United States should look to eastern Asia for plant 
introductions, the vegetation of western Europe being 
more suited to the western coast of the United States. 
Another general fact in plant introduction is this: 
Plants grown from seed collected in the northern part of 
the plants’ range are more hardy than those grown from 
southern seed. There are many examples of this, but one 
of the best is Douglas spruce or as it is called in the w est 
Douglas fir. The Rocky Mountain form of Douglas fir 
is perfectly hardy in the east while the coastal plain form 
is not. 
Professor Curtis believes that there is a bright future 
for the Douglas fir in eastern plantations. He considers 
it the finest of the conical evergreens and thinks it should 
be planted in preference to any spruce or fir. It is a vig¬ 
orous grow er and is well spoken of by every tree man in 
the east. Its foliage is soft and flexible and its habit in¬ 
termediate between the stiff* spruce or fir and the grace¬ 
ful hemlock. 
METHODS OF CONTROLLING ROOT-KNOT 
For fields in which plants are permanently growing, 
for example, in orchards and gardens of ornamental 
shrubs, no very satisfactory treatment has been worked 
out. It has been found that by cultivating the fields thor¬ 
oughly and at the same time fertilizing them highly, par¬ 
ticularly with stable manures and commercial fertilizers 
rich in potash, so that the plants are induced to make ra¬ 
pid root growth, the roots will frequently go below the 
level at which most of the nematodes are present and will 
develop faster than the nematodes can produce their 
knots. This permits the development of fairly good crops. 
It has been shown that peach trees affected with the di¬ 
sease, if treated in this manner, can sometimes be caused 
to outgrow the trouble to a considerable extent. More of¬ 
ten the renewed vigor results in only a temporary relief, 
as the new root growth subsequently becomes invaded 
by the parasite and the plant relapses into its former 
condition. 
Where only a few trees in a young orchard are affected 
(and this is commonly the case when partially infested 
nursery stock is planted on uninfested land), they should 
be removed and destroyed. The surrounding soil, includ¬ 
ing an area well beyond that occupied by the infested 
roots of the removed tree, should then be treated with a 
solution of formaldehyde (1 part of 40 per cent formalde¬ 
hyde to 50 parts of water) at the rate of about 2 to 3 gal¬ 
lons per square yard. In this way the further spread of 
the disease is prevented, and nematode-free trees may be 
replanted after at least one year’s delay with little fear 
of their becoming infested. 
One means of preventing root-knot in peach orchards 
practiced in certain parts of Florida is that of grafting 
the peach on the native wild plum. This method has 
proved successful from the standpoint of the disease, be¬ 
cause the wild plum is resistant to root-knot. As a gen¬ 
eral horticultural practice, however, grafting the peach 
on the wild plum has not given satisfactory results. 
However successful any of the above methods may be, 
it is very evident that the proper and safe way to control 
the disease in orchards is never to plant trees on land 
that is known to be or suspected of being infested with 
nematodes and to use only uninfested nursery stock. It 
is far better to wait the required number of years to free 
the land from the pest than to take the risk of having the 
trees remain several years without any appreciable 
growth, as is too often the case where nematodes are 
abundant. To plant a very susceptible crop, such as the 
ordinary varieties of cowpeas, melons, cucumbers, or 
tomatoes, in a field that is later to be occupied by an or¬ 
chard or other permanent crop is highly undesirable. The 
nematodes will multiply in great numbers on the suscep¬ 
tible plants and so infest the soil that the permanent crop 
will be seriously injured. For this reason many farmers 
in the South believe that either the growing of cowpeas 
before planting peach trees or the use of cowpeas as a 
cover crop after the peach orchard has been planted is a 
dangerous practice. Such is the case if the cowpeas are 
not of a resistant variety . — Extract from Farmers Bulle¬ 
tin 648, U.S.D. of A. 
