Northern Nut Growers Association, Report Of The Proceedings At The Tenth Annual Meeting.: Battle Creek, Michigan, December 9 and 10, 1919
Science
Northern Nut Growers Association, Report Of The Proceedings At The Tenth Annual Meeting.: Battle Creek, Michigan, December 9 and 10, 1919
Northern Nut Growers Association -- Periodicals; Nut trees -- Periodicals; Nuts -- Periodicals
These, in brief, are the high spots of the survey from the point of view
of the scientist. In addition, I covered adjacent region of New Jersey
to the west, including the Watchung Mt. range about Plainfield and the
Oranges; the Bronx and Van Cortland Park and the country to Yonkers and
the north, and to the northeast of New Rochelle. Long Island, as far as
Hempstead, was also included. Altogether I travelled about 1200 miles on
foot, not counting the distance traversed on trolleys and railroads.
Always armed with opera glasses, I was careful not to use them when
anyone was looking, for on the second day of the survey I had been
arrested on the charge of being a German spy! I was also arrested on
board a train in New Jersey for looking earnestly at a topographic map,
then sharply out of the car window and noting what I had seen (dead
chestnut trees) on said map. The carrying of a botanist's tin can
(containing fungi, not bombs) was also an additional implicating
circumstance on the latter occasion.
What then were the results of the survey? They may be stated briefly as
follows:
1. No immune trees were found.
2. For the most part the older trees (from 20 years upward) were
entirely dead, and had been so for a long period, as attested by the
bare trunks, weathered a characteristic gray color which only time can
produce.
3. However, large numbers of seedlings and young saplings were located,
both healthy and diseased.
4. _The most important result was the finding of three well defined
colonies of living mature trees; all of which, by virtue of characters
to be presently described, are offering more or less resistance to the
disease._
SEEDLING TREES
It is well known that seedlings and young saplings are naturally immune
for a certain period, which varies in extent from 8 to 15 years beyond
germination of the seed beginning, of course with the first formation of
the seedling. Such immunity depends, however, not on any inherent
characteristic, but on the fact that at this period the bark is usually
smooth, sound, and free from wounds of any sort where Endothia spores
and mycelium might enter. Of course, when wounded from any cause
whatever during this period of youth, this immunity ends, so that the
condition might perhaps be termed physical, in contrast to physiological
immunity.
As I have already said, large numbers of seedlings, for the most part
still unattacked, were found in many places in the area surveyed. There
are of course no grounds for believing that such seedlings, descended as
they are from non-resistant trees, are physiologically immune. Where
they are free from disease, this exemption is due merely to the physical
immunity I have just mentioned. Since they therefore represent
non-resistant stock, they were used for comparative inoculation work,
which will be referred to later.
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