246 
THE NATIONAL NURSERYMAN 
bush roses and also great numbers of climbing roses 
to be trained on trellises.” 
As the result of a referendum recently conducted by 
the American Rose Society, locations in no less than 45 
cities have been suggested for municipal rose gardens. 
Each of these locations have been sponsored by resident 
members of the American Rose Society, whose names I 
should be glad to have given to the park superintendents 
in each of the cities so designated, if desired. The Ameri¬ 
can Rose Society feels deeply that the children of these 
cities, too often confined like cliff dwellers, are entitled 
to their rightful heritage of rose knowledge and rose 
love, flow these youngsters may be expected to profit 
by such opportunities as a municipal rose garden might 
afford them and some day grow up to cany on your work, 
may be exemplified by the story told me by a friend who 
had been working down where the children had no play¬ 
ground except the city streets. She noticed, in passing 
a group of children on their knees, closely inspecting 
some object on the sidewalk where a few grains of oats 
dropped from a horse’s feed bag, had sprouted and 
sprung up between the cracks in the pavement, when 
one little fellow looked up into her sympathetic face, with 
fine enthusiasm, pointing to the blades of grass, he said, 
“Madam! some day here a park stand.” For the love of 
the children, we appeal to you to push forward the work 
already well begun so that the time will soon come as 
predicted by horticulture of Roston last week, when “No 
large city will be without its official garden of roses.” 
As evidence of the supreme appreciation on the part 
of your patrons to be expected from this work, let us for 
a moment observe the attention given according to record, 
to the Municipal Rose Garden in Hartford. On best infor¬ 
mation available, I have it that in 1920, 23,000 visitors 
was the total for July 4th and this number was greatly 
increased on Rose Sunday, July 11th, when every city 
and community within a radius of 100 miles was repre¬ 
sented by people in automobiles. In the two years since, 
on these occasions, the attendance has been steadily in¬ 
creasing, showing no less than 35,000 people in a single 
day and 149,600 for the year certainly proof positivie of 
the popular appeal produced by a well conducted muni¬ 
cipal rose garden. 
I note by your program that you have epitomized the 
saying of one of your landscape architects who “would 
have the entire city a work of art” and Emerson has 
called agriculture “Mother of the Arts.” How fitting, 
therefore, in approaching the subject of a rose garden, 
to recognize that we are definitely entering into the field 
of one of the fine arts. 
The message of The American Rose Society is an ap¬ 
peal to you for the establishment of a rose garden in 
every city park system and a request that you should 
adopt as the American standard your recognition of the 
fact that no park or park system is complete without its 
municipal rose garden. 
After the above address, Mr. Pyle proceeded to show on 
the screen some seventy-five lantern slides, depicting rose 
types and species (especially of Hugonis) of the start al¬ 
ready made in municipal rose gardens in this country 
and views of European gardens obtained by the speaker 
in the course of his two rose trips to Europe. 
SOME CHARACTERISTICS OF SEEDS OF CONIFEROUS 
TREES FROM THE PACIFIC NORTHWEST 
By J. A. Larsen, Forest Examiner 
Priest River Forest Experiment Station, U. S. Department of 
Agriculture Forest Service 
The purpose in this article is to set forth the results of eight 
years of seed testing at Priest River Forest Experiment Station 
in northern Idaho, and to record the most essential things 
learned during this work bearing on handling and testing of 
the seed of northwestern conifers. Besides hints on methods 
of testing seed, this article contains data on the number of seed 
per pound, rate of germination, efforts at stimulation of western 
white pine seed, sterilization tests and longevity of the stored 
seed. 
The species dealt with are: 
Pinus ponderosa, Laws. 
Pinus monticola, D. Don. 
Pinus contorta var. murrayana,, Engelm. 
Pseudotsuga taxifolia, Poir, Britt. 
Larix.occidentalis, Nutt. 
Picea engelmanni, Engelm. 
Thuja plicata, D. Don. 
Abies grandis, Lindl. 
Tsuga heterophylla, Sarg. 
Western yellow pine 
Western white pine 
Lodgepole pine 
Douglas fir 
Western larch 
Er.gelmann spruce 
Western red cedar-' 
Lowland white fir 
Western hemlock 
Care Necessary in Extraction ancl Handling — 
The quality of the seed itself, its percent germination and 
sale value may be much impaired and reduced by careless meth¬ 
ods of handling or storing. The exact effect of storing seed in 
the cones depends in no small degree upon the temperatures, 
condition of the cones, whether wet or dry, and the length of 
time stored. It would seem reasonable to conclude that less in¬ 
jury will result when the cones are stored dry and indoors, 
and not allowed to mold, rather than to store them outdoors in 
wet condition subject to fluctuating temperatures. Of three 
lots of western white pine seed collected in the fall of 1914, 
which were brought to the storage sheds in wet condition in 
early October, that which was extracted at once germinated 
31%. The second lot, stored two months, germinated 26%, and 
that stored three months, only from 12 to 17%. 
The tests furnish no data on damage by low temperatures, 
nor is it likely that any would result under ordinary winter con¬ 
ditions in the region native to these trees or under tempera¬ 
tures up to 100o or 110o F., the highest that can possibly occur 
over these forests in summer. During the extraction, however, 
the seed is often exposed to undue heat, and is sometimes in¬ 
jured, for the temptation is always to get the cones to open in 
the shortest time possible, in order to reduce the cost per pound 
of seed. Western yellow pine seed, taken from the cones by 
sun drying, gave 42% germination while that taken from cones 
subjected to high heat, 120o F. and over, gave only 11% In 
other tests of the same seed, that extracted at 120o gave 38%, 
that at 130o, 18.5%, and that at 140o, only 1.3%. Mr. J. St. Bein'" 
edicto, using 1912 yellow pine seed, obtained 55% by sun drying 
of cones, 12% by extractipg-at 169o and no germination at all 
with temperatures ab<£ve 213o F. Without the use of heat in 
extraction, Benedict 1 obtained 5% germination from western A, 
white pine, 55% from western yellow pine, 30% from lodgepole 
pine and 12% from Douglas fir in thirty-five days; but by using 
relatively high temperatures during extraction, gnd testing for 
thirty-five days, white pine extracted at 199 o gave no germina¬ 
tion, western yellow pine extracted at 169o gave 6%, lodgepole 
pine extracted at 152o gave 8%, and Douglas fir at 166o, none. 
Kiln temperature during extraction is now kept under 110o F. 
The influence of moist heated air on the seed during extraction 
is gradually receiving more attention. When the cones are heat¬ 
ed to effect drying, the air in the room, especially that within 
the cones and surrounding the seed becomes very moist and 
not infrequently saturated. Researches have established that 
saturated heated air has a much greater heat energy than dry 
air under the same temperatures. The energy of saturated air 
at 50o F. is as great as dry air at 84o F. 2 In experiments with 
Pinus sylvestris at Eberswalde Professor Haack found that 
high temperatures and moist air were far more injurious to the 
seed than high heat and dry air 3 . Professor Haack gives tab¬ 
les which will be found of great interest to students of this sub¬ 
ject. Dr. J. V. Hofmann 4 of the Wind River Experiment Sta- 
1 “Maximum Temperatures and New Methods in Extracting Coni¬ 
ferous Seeds;” mss. U. S. Forest Service, Missoula, Montana. 
2 Der Warmeaustauch in festen Erdboden, in Gewassern und in 
der Atmosphare. Julius Springer, Berlin, 1904. 
3Zeitschrift f. Forst u. Jadgw. Vol. 38, p. 441, 1906. 
4 Annual report, Wind River Exp. Station, Mss. 1917, U. S. Forest 
Service. 
4 
