Gold, Sport, and Coffee Planting in Mysore: With chapters on coffee planting in Coorg, the Mysore representative assembly, the Indian congress, caste and the Indian silver question, being the 38 years' experiences of a Mysore planterElliot, Robert H. (Robert Henry)
History
Gold, Sport, and Coffee Planting in Mysore: With chapters on coffee planting in Coorg, the Mysore representative assembly, the Indian congress, caste and the Indian silver question, being the 38 years' experiences of a Mysore planter
Elliot, Robert H. (Robert Henry)
Caste -- India; Coffee; Karnataka (India) -- Description and travel; Karnataka (India) -- Politics and government
The Attí (_Ficus glomerata_) was with me once a favourite tree, and is
generally considered to be a good one, as it affords a cool and desirable
shade. As a young tree it is admirable, but as it ages the foliage becomes
poor and scanty, and the tree has a tendency to run too much to thick
bole, and thick branches, which are poorly supplied with smaller branches
and foliage. When about thirty years old, I have generally found this tree
to be a poor shader, but it can be much improved by severe pruning, or
rather lopping. When thinning out shade on this estate about twenty years
ago, a twelve year old tree had every branch removed preparatory to
cutting down, but by some accident the tree was left standing, and the
stumps of the branches threw out fresh shoots, and the tree is now
flourishing, and has a comparatively wide spread of branches and fair
amount of foliage. It is evident, then, that pruning heavily will cause
the tree to throw out new and vigorous shoots, but as this is a
troublesome and expensive work, and as attí is certainly liable to the
defect above alluded to, and is, besides, not a wide-spreading tree, it is
evidently not so desirable as any of the first five I have named. Attí can
be grown from cuttings, but these must not be large ones, i.e., they
should be thinner than those commonly used when planting cuttings of the
various fig trees recommended at the beginning of the section on shade.
The Noga (so called from its being much used to make bullock yokes from)
or Nogurigay (_Cedrela Microcarpa_) is a favourite tree to plant for
shade, as it is a quick grower, and cattle do not eat it, and it has been
extensively planted in Mysore and Coorg. The shade is fairly good, but the
tree is not a wide spreader. Then it has one very great objection owing to
its being so peculiarly liable, when about thirty years old, to be
severely attacked, and often killed, by parasites, and as it is so liable
to be attacked, and therefore supplies a large quantity of parasite seed,
the tree is the means of spreading these parasites to other shade trees. I
have found that if you even remove every branch that is attacked, and
quite below each parasite, the parasite will spring out again, and even
more vigorously than before. In short, I found it impossible to contend
with the parasites, and am ordering the removal of all Nogurigays from my
plantations. I may add here that when jack is lopped in order to remove
parasites, they do not spring out again in the same way. My head duffadar
informs me that the reason why Nogurigays are so liable to parasites is on
account of the rough, deeply-fissured bark, which retains the parasite
seeds dropped by birds, whereas smooth-barked trees, like the first five
named, of course do not retain them, and hence you rarely see parasites on
smooth-barked trees. Another objection to this tree is that, from its
shedding its leaves in the monsoon, and not growing them again till we are
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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