Che ffiationa fflurseryman. 
FOR GROWERS AND DEALERS IN NURSERY STOCK 
The National Nurseryman Publishing Co., Incorporated 
Vol. XXXI HATBORO, PENNA., AUGUST 1923 No. 8 
Possibilities of Nursery Tree Certification 
By J. K. Shaw, Research Professor of Pomology, Massachusetts Agricultural College, Read Before the Convention 
of the American Nurserymen s Association, Chicago, June 27-29 
Before discussing the subject assigned to me on your 
program I desire to present, at the suggestion of the 
chairman of your program committee, certain tilings that 
are very intimately associated with the problems of tree 
certification. I want to discuss for a few moments the 
leaf characters of apple varieties and their value in var¬ 
iety identification. Of course variety identification must 
precede certification and while leaf characters do not tell 
the whole story they are of great importance in determin¬ 
ing if a variety is true to name. I have a few lantern 
slides to illustrate leaf characters, most of the slides I 
shall show you are made from the same plates as the 
cuts in our Bulletin 208, a copy of which I trust a good 
many of you have seen. If you do not have a copy it may 
be secured on request. 
Now I am perfectly aware that identification ol var¬ 
ieties in the nursery row is nothing new; that many old 
and experienced nurserymen know varieties just as well 
or better than I do. Yet I have wondered if such men 
were not a less effective factor in the nursery business 
than formerly. The business has become highly organ¬ 
ized with an increasing proportion of temporary, unskill¬ 
ed and careless employees. It seems to me that the prob¬ 
lem of misnamed trees has not been solved but becomes 
more troublesome as time goes on. It is a source of 
trouble to both nurseryman and fruit grower and often 
of severe losses to both. I have no means of estimating 
the proportion of misnamed trees received by growers 
but I have been led to believe that approximately 10% ol 
the fruit trees coming into New England are wrongly 
named. On the average about 100,000 apple trees are 
planted in Massachusetts each year. If 10% ol these 
are wrongly named and the loss is $2.00 per tree, which 
is certainly a low estimate, it means a loss of $20,000 per 
year in Massachusetts alone. 
I have been told by nurserymen that misnamed trees 
arise principally from mixtures in the nursery row and 
it is certain that mixtures in the nursery row are only too 
frequent. I am persuaded, however, that there are many 
errors in the packing shed which is not at all strange 
when one considers the type of help most large nursei- 
ies are compelled to employ. I hate to say that a nui- 
seryman will be less careful and conscientious \\ hen 
dealing with a brother nurseryman than when selling io 
the fruit grower, but experience and observation lead ok 1 
to believe that such may be the case. Certain it is w < 
every transaction involving a given lot of trees increases 
Ihe chances of error and decreases in some degree at 
least the certainty of the grower getting what he orders. 
Do not think that I share the belief of some fruit growers 
that all nurserymen are rascals. As a class they are as 
honest and dependable as the fruit growers themselves. 
Just as there are some fruit growers that “deacon” their 
apple packages, so there are a few nurserymen who 
knowingly deceive their customers. Such do not continue 
long in the business. The worst charge that I can bring 
against the nurserymen is that many of them do not feel 
the responsibility that they should feel to give the grow¬ 
er good trees, true to name. 
Yet nurserymen as an organized group and as individ¬ 
uals have made sincere efforts to correct the evil of mis¬ 
named trees. They are constantly endeavoring to elim¬ 
inate mixtures in the nursery row. They have gone back 
to bearing trees for their supply of buds and have tried 
to keep things straight in packing shed. Some have gone 
further than the usual guarantee of replacement or mon¬ 
ey refunded in cases where misnamed trees have been 
sold. Recently there has been proposed a scheme of in¬ 
surance to cover losses arising from the planting of mis¬ 
named trees. 
It is sometimes asserted that the fruit grower will al¬ 
ways buy trees where he can get them the cheapest, that 
he will refuse to pay the relatively higher price which 
the careful, conscientious nurseryman must necessarily 
charge for his stock. There is a good deal of truth in 
this, yet I am persuaded that if the fruit grower could 
feel assured beyond reasonable doubt that he was getting 
trees true to name he would not hesitate to pay a mod¬ 
erately increased price. In the past he has not felt sure 
that the higher price gave assurance of trees true to 
name. 
In an effort to solve this problem the Massachusetts 
Fruit Growers’ Association has carried on for the past 
two years a scheme of variety certification of trees in the 
nursery row. This organization offers certification to 
any nurseryman, of trees growing in the state or oi trees 
growing in nurseries in other states, but purchased lor 
planting or resale in Massachusetts. Requests for cer¬ 
tification are turned over to the Department of Pomology 
of the Experiment Station. An expert is sent to examine 
the growing trees and if they are found true to name a 
small hole is drilled through a branch of the trees and 
