MeN GING HERBACEOUS PLANTS.* 
U. P. HEDRICK, O. M. TAYLOR anp RICHARD WELLINGTON. 
SUMMARY. 
I. The objects of ringing are: To cause unproductive plants to 
set fruit; to increase the size of the fruit and thereby the pro- 
ductiveness of the plant; and to hasten the maturity of the fruit. 
2. Many woody plants, especially the apple and grape in 
America, have been advantageously ringed. But the operation 
does not seem to have been used on herbaceous plants though 
theoretically it can be practiced as well on exogenous herbaceous 
plants as on woody plants. 
3. This Bulletin is a report of experiments in ringing two 
herbaceous plants, the tomato and the chrysanthemum, chosen 
because their product and the manner of growth of the plants 
should show most advantageously the effects of ringing. 
4. In ringing, a wound is made through the cortex and the 
bast of a plant. Usually a band of bark of greater or less width 
is removed. Plants are ringed during the period of growth when 
the bark peels most readily from the wood. 
5. The theory upon which ringing is founded is: That un- 
assimilated food passes from the roots of the plant to the leaves 
mainly through the outer layer of the woody cylinder. The 
assimilated food is distributed through vessels in the cortex of 
the inner bark. When plants are ringed the flow upward con- 
tinues but that downward is checked and the top of the plant 
is thus supplied with an extra amount of food at the expense 
of the parts below the ring. 
6. Ringing is unnatural and while it may favor some of the 
organs of a plant must be harmful to the plant as an individual. 
7. There are other means of securing the ends attained by 
ringing, as the bending or the twisting of shoots, which should 
be less harmful to the plant than ringing. 
8. Tomatoes were ringed in the winter of 1905—'06; the variety 
was Lorillard; the soil a good greenhouse loam; plants were 
* A reprint of Bulletin No. 288. 
[287] 
