198 
THE NATIONAL NURSERYMAN 
items had nothing to do with market development work, deduct¬ 
ing them, the total expense for market development activity has 
been less than $3500. 
REPORT OF COMMITTEE IN NURSERY TRAINING 
Your Committee on Courses in Nursery Training in agricul¬ 
tural colleges respectfully reports that the Massachusetts Agri¬ 
cultural College at Amherst has provided a short term course 
which was in operation last winter. A detailed report on this 
will be given by Mr. Richard M. Wyman at this convention. 
The University of Illinois has announced that it will provide 
a four-year course for nursery training, commencing in Septem¬ 
ber, 1922, under the direction of Prof. J. C. Blair. It has been 
suggested by Prof Blair that a great aid in promoting the work 
would be a formal action in the form of a resolution by the 
American Association of Nurserymen, endorsing the course re¬ 
ferred to and promising co-operation in the matter of recommend¬ 
ing the course to prospective students. 
All applications for this course should be addressed to Prof. 
J. C. Blair, University of Illinois,. Urbana, Ill. 
The New York State College of Agriculture at Cornell Univer¬ 
sity is willing to provide a four-year course and add two special¬ 
ists on insects and fungus diseases of trees and shrubs, as soon 
as funds are made available by the New York Legislature. 
The New York Nurserymen’s Association should get the ap¬ 
propriation for this. 
There should be courses in the Southern and Pacific States 
and we recommend this to the attention of the State Association 
in these States. 
We also recommend that the colleges make arrangements so 
that students can take courses in one or more colleges and so 
may travel and work in various parts of the country. This will 
give them a broader view of nurserymen’s duties and oppor¬ 
tunities. 
ALVIN E. NELSON, Chairman, 
HENRY HICKS, 
THEO. F. BORST, 
RALPH T. OLCOTT. 
PROGRESS OF NURSERY STOCK INVESTIGATIONS BY 
U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE—1922. 
By L. B. Scott. 
Read at the Annual Meeting of the American Association of Nur¬ 
serymen, Detroit, Mich., June, 1922. 
Mr. Chairman, Members of the American Association of Nur¬ 
serymen, Ladies and Gentlemen: 
1 am very glad of this opportunity of meeting with you today. 
I had the pleasure of addressing your Chicago meeting a year 
ago and outlined briefly some of the things we were attempting 
to do in the Nursery Stock Investigations project. I therefore 
am very glad to be with you today and report on our progress 
up to date. 
Two years ago an appropriation of $20,000 for nursery stock 
investigations was secured for the U. S. Department of Agricul¬ 
ture. The project is administered by the Bureau of Plant In¬ 
dustry through the Office of Horticultural and Pomological In¬ 
vestigations. Dr. L. C. Corbett, who is in charge of this office 
has just addressed you on the general work of the office. I 
was brought back into the Department the fore part of Febru¬ 
ary, 1921, after a year’s absence in commercial work, and 
placed in charge of the nursery stock investigations. Associated 
with me in the nursery stock work is Mr. G. E. Yerkes, a grad¬ 
uate of the Kansas Agricultural College, who has had a num¬ 
ber of years’ nursery experience in Kansas and Oklahoma and 
who is in direct charge of all our propagation. 
Mr. Charles Swingle, who is also a graduate of the Kansas 
Agricultural College and has had several years’ nursery exper¬ 
ience in California is another member of our staff; and with us 
this year in a temporary capacity, is Mr. M. L. Hancock, who 
has also had several years’ nursery experience, and when he 
leaves us, expects to take charge of the propagation work for 
the College of Agriculture of the University of Nanking, Nan¬ 
king, China. 
Mr. Stanley Johnston, a graduate of the Michigan Agricul¬ 
tural College, who is superintendent of the branch station, of 
the Michigan Agricultural Experiment Station, at South Haven, 
has charge of the nursery stock work at that place. 
The appropriation of $20,000 secured two years ago was re¬ 
peated in the bill for the present fiscal year and also for the 
fiscal year beginning July 1. With such a small appropriation, 
it has been necessary for us to plan our work very carefully, 
and in fact as I have said publicly several times, to operate as 
a small nurseryman and a very small one at that. 
Our experimental work this year has been carried on at three 
places, Bell, Maryland; South Haven, Mich.; and at Diamond 
Springs, Va. 
At Bell, where this year the bulk of our work has been de¬ 
veloped, we have 6% acres leased for nursery stock work. 
About 4 acres this year are actually planted. 
At South Haven, our work is carried on cooperatively with 
the Michigan Agricultural Experiment Station. We are only 
using a half acre of ground at South Haven this year, but hope 
another season to extend our work there. 
At Diamond Springs, our work is carried on on land belong¬ 
ing to the Virginia Truck Experiment Station. 
With work being carried on in at least three locations where 
soil conditions and climatic conditions are very different, we 
are able to secure a good check on our work and also to find 
out whether methods which seem applicable in one section can 
be utilized more or less generally. 
In May of this year a number of nurserymen attended a con¬ 
ference with the Federal Horticultural Board at Washington, 
and while there, your President, Mr. Cashman, and some seven 
or eight other leading nurserymen who were there, visited our 
experimental nursery at Bell. Those men were all practical 
nurserymen and their expression of approval and appreciation 
of the way we were developing the nursery stock work, person¬ 
ally, meant a great deal to me. 
Our three main sub-projects can be grouped as follows: 
(1) The raising of fruit-tree seedlings; 
(2) The vegetative propagation of fruit-tree stocks; 
(3) A comprehensive study of a number of common and 
several promising new rose stocks. 
While apple and pear seedlings have been raised in the Kaw 
valley of Kansas for many years, and while several millions of 
seedlings are annually shipped from that locality, in talking 
with nurserymen in different parts of the country, it was found 
that there was a wide range of opinion regarding Kansas-grown 
seedlings. Some preferred the Kansas grown, while others pre¬ 
ferred the imported. 
In order to secure some definite information for ourselves, 
we purchased one-year-old apple seedlings a year ago from a 
number of different sources and lined them out in our nursery 
at Bell. As a result of one year’s observation, it was our op¬ 
inion that the seedlings which made the best growth were (1) 
American-grown seedlings from American seed; (2) imported 
French seedlings; and (3) American-grown seedlings from 
French seed. 
We are continuing our observations on these seedlings in 
comparative blocks for another year at Bell, and in addition 
have taken a few hundred trees of each of three different lots 
of seedlings for a further test. These seedlings were grown at 
Hamburg, Iowa, in 1920, and include (1) seedlings from Ver¬ 
mont seeds; (2) seedlings from Minnesota seeds; and (3) seed¬ 
lings from French seeds. These seedlings were in the general 
study block at Bell in 1921 and were lined out again this year 
for further study and budded the last of May to the following 
varieties: Northern Spy, Baldwin, Staymen, Jonathan and 
Winesap. The behavior of these from year to year will be 
noted. 
From our work up to date, we believe that good apple seed¬ 
lings can be raised in this country, but we also believe a better 
seedling can be raised from American seed than from imported 
French seed. 
Is there any difference in seedlings raised from our named 
American apple varieties? The answer is there is a marked 
difference. For two years we have had an absolute failure in 
getting a stand of seedlings from seeds of Baldwin. Seeds of 
McIntosh on the other hand produce strong, vigorous seedlings. 
Seedlings of Tolman were particularly outstanding last year 
and gave us a high percentage of clean straight roots. 
Should we find that the seedlings of some one variety seem 
particularly outstanding, after a series of years and seem de¬ 
sirable to use as stocks, will it be practicable for the American 
apple seedling grower to secure that seed in sufficient quanti¬ 
ties and at a price so that he can handle his seedlings at a fair 
profit?. I am very frank in saying that we are quite skeptical on 
this point. In addition to this fact, I believe it is commonly 
recognized that there is a great variation in individual seedling 
root stocks. This is particularly emphasized in the work of 
Prof. F. C. Reimer of the Southern Oregon Exepriment Station, 
at Talent, Ore., with Pyrus ursuriensis and Pyrus calleryana, 
two Chinese species which seem to offer unusual possibilities 
as blight-resistant stocks for pears. He has found, however, a 
marked variation in the resistance of individual seedlings of 
these species to blight. Because of this variation in individual 
seedlings which might be manifested either in disease resis- 
