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Seed-Time and Harvest: October: Seedlings

The genial warmth of the sun is also very important; so, other things being equal, trees bear better toward the southern part of their range than toward the northern border. Seedlings from seed gathered in a southern climate are apt to succumb when set out in colder regions. Seedlings from Black Walnuts gathered in Missouri are killed by the spring frosts in Minnesota. Some species of trees bear seeds at a comparatively early age, but only a small proportion of such seeds will grow. Seed production is at its best after a tree has got its growth, so far as height is concerned; for trees, like people, stop growing taller, in course of time, and begin putting on girth. When they do finally get to the time when they begin reproducing after their kind, trees keep it up to a very old age, and it is not uncommon to find them making heavy crops a year or two before they die; but, as I have said, trees in middle life, as a rule, bear the best seed.

GROWING TREES FROM SPROUTS Reproduction by sprouts is practicable with some kinds of trees, and compared with reproduction from seeds, it has its advantages and its disadvantages. Sprouts grow much faster, at first, than trees grown from seed, because they have so much food material stored in the roots. This sprouting method is employed a good deal because the trees come on so fast and because you can just go on and cut vour timber, and the sprouts grow up from the stumps. And yet, simple as it looks, this stump-sprouting business has puzzles in it that would surely "stump" a young forester who hadn't first learned something about it.

For instance, to get the best results from the stumps, the trees must be cut between early October and early April. If done in the summer the sprouts which Nature promptly sends up around the stump to help perpetuate the race of the fallen tree (since posterity by way of the seed is no longer possible) will be weak when winter comes and are likely to be killed; or, at least, seriously injured by the freezing cold which follows.

And the stumps should be cut low because decaying stumps often infect the tender little trees; and the more stump left to decay the greater the danger. And brush should be piled away from the stumps, because brush often harbors hurtful insects and fungi and always interferes with the growth of the sprouts. It's just good housekeeping applied to man's work, this keeping things nice and neat and "rid up" as you go along. (The Chestnut is considered the best tree of all for sprout reproduction, because it sprouts so freely, grows so fast, and makes such valuable timber, but it is dying off so rapidly, owing to one of the numerous bark diseases that trees are heir to, that unless Uncle Sam's experts, who are working on the problem, find out how to check it, the beautiful Chestnut Trees will disappear entirely from our woods and, with them, one of the greatest joys of the autumn season when, with the very earliest frosts, the prickly burrs open, all of their own accord, and throw down handfuls of the delicious nuts, with their shiny, new coats: "Here you are, boys and girls! Help yourselves!") But even that isn't all. For instance, would it make any difference, do you think, whether the stumps were sawed off smoothly or just chopped off any old way? And should the top of the stump be left level, like a floor, or with a slope, like a roof? And does it make any difference whether you break the bark on the stump; by tearing it, say, in case the tree is still attached to the stump after it has fallen? Here is what one of the interesting text-books that they study in the schools of forestry says about these things: Stumps should be cut smoothly and sloping, so that water will run off and the danger from insects and fungi that attack rotting wood will be decreased. The bark should also be left intact, as wounded bark always invites similar invasion.

One thing more: a stump section should, as a rule, be cut clean of all mature timber so as to give the greatest amount of light to the young trees. A forest thus kept up is known, in the language of the forester, as a "coppice." The art of letting Nature do the work looked simple enough from a distance, didn't it? But as Philip Armour, the great Chicago packer, said about business in general: "It looks simple to the outsider, but it's like a sheep's wool, it's full of kinks."

And there is plenty of opportunity for the exercise of good judgment in deciding on the stumps for your little stump nurseries. It is best to propagate from fine, prosperous trees rather than from those which, for any reason, have been stunted in their growth; on the same principle that you select the best ears of corn and from the most vigorous stalks, in choosing seed-corn. Also it may often happen that, among the trees in a wood-lot, there are some of better form and quality -- say White Oaks in a Chestnut coppice -- and these are left to grow. As any furniture man will tell you, Oak brings very high prices in these days, and good Oak Trees will put much more into the family "community-chest" than do trees used only for fuel, fence-posts, and such. When I said, back there, that a stump section should be cut clean, I meant that no trees or brush should be left standing merely because they weren't worth cutting, for they needlessly shut off the light from the young trees you want to grow up from the sprouts.

Judgment must also be used in keeping the sprouts thinned out -- much as in thinning out carrots and turnips and beets and things in the garden -- and where the stumps become exhausted, as stumps will do after a while, and stop sending up sprouts, you will put vigorous young seedlings in place of them. In order that a new crop of trees may be constantly coming on, at the same time that timber is being cut from year to year, a given area is divided up into sections, and a section is cut over each year. Many thousands of acres of woodland, especially in New England, New York, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey are handled in this way.

To apply it to your own home-grounds -- say you're a farmer boy -- your father divides the wood-lot into ten sections and, with the help of the hired man, cuts over one section each year. Then when you're old enough to do your part and, perhaps, take the entire management of the farm off father's shoulders, the annual tree-harvest will begin again in the section he started on the day mother and sister Mary baked the cake with the ten candles on it, in celebration of your tenth birthday.

USEFUL HINTS FOR WOOD SCOUTS When we get along into April we'll actually start a little National Forest of our own, with Forest-Rangers and headquarters at Washington and everything; and now, in the fall, is the time to get ready for it by collecting and properly storing the seeds.