Home › Seed-Time and Harvest: October › Seed-Time and Harvest: October: Willows

Seed-Time and Harvest: October: Willows

SEED-GATHERING IN OTHER FIELDS The seeds of most trees ripen in the fall, but the seeds of Willows, Poplars, Elms, and Soft Maples ripen in the spring and must be gathered as soon as they are ripe and before the winds begin to sow them. The very light seeds, such as those of the Willows and Poplars, are picked from the tree; but seeds from such trees as the Elm, Maple, and Ash are gathered from the ground. In the case of trees of the Pine family the cones are pulled off with rakes from the standing trees, or, in a lumbering region, from the trees after they have been cut down. (While the squirrels are a part of the "Federal Banking System" -- so far as seed-deposits are concerned -- they are only part of it; but if you've ever tried pulling a cone from a tree, you can realize how convenient squirrels and rakes are.) IMPROVING ON NATURE'S METHODS The trees plant their own seeds soon after they ripen, in the spring or the fall, but experience shows that it is best to keep the fall seeds over winter and plant them the following season when the conditions are most favorable. In the case of the Elm, Maple, Poplar, and Willow, it is necessary to plant the seeds in the spring, since they are difficult to keep. For winter storage some seeds must be kept dry, while others that have a tendency to dry out are kept in big airtight bottles, called "carboys," such as you have seen in the back yard of the drug-store. Small seeds, like those of the Ash, tend to "lie over," i.e., they won't start growing when you want them to. So they are kept a little moist until planting-time. They are stored between layers of cheese-cloth and covered with sand which is kept moist. Nuts and acorns are kept in bins. But while some seeds must be kept moist and others absolutely free from moisture in air-tight containers, all must be kept "squirrel-tight"; for the little bankers with the sharp teeth often turn the tables on the foresters by following their own stores to the bins and thereafter living at their ease! II. THE MIRACLE OF THE SEED It seems plain enough - although it isn't at all plain -- how a tree, once it has reached treehood, can keep on being a tree, growing more leaves, twigs, branches, bark, roots, and so on -- but how these things and its flowers and the standard pattern of the family shape it takes are all determined beforehand in the simple little seed out of which it comes -- that's what beats me! I said as much several years ago, (In The Strange Adventures of a Pebble.) and, really, there isn't much more to say. As one writer puts it: (Trees, Shrubs, and Vines, Parkhurst.) In the seed are the sealed orders for the whole plant's career, from the Sequoia that lives five thousand years to the climbing vine that dies in six months and the grass which to-day is and to-morrow is cast into the oven. Another, a very learned man indeed, as you can see from the big words he uses, says:

A seed is of complex structure and multiple origin. The seed coat belongs to the parent sporophyte. The endosperm is gametrophytic in origin in the gymnosperms, while in the angiosperms it is a unique body in a sense homologous with the new sporophyte. The seed may thus include three generations in its constitution. It is, therefore, simply a young plant in which development has been arrested and which at this stage has been cast loose from the parent, enclosed in a protective covering, and well stocked with food.

In other words, for this reason and for that, a seed is "simply" a youngster whose parent has, in some mysterious way, furnished it with a full set of working drawings, showing just what style of a plant it's to build itself into, put on its cloak, given it a basket of food, and said: "Good-by and good luck!"

But, little as we know about the "how" of it, the fact that a tree can reproduce itself is very important, not only to foresters, but to the whole world; otherwise it wouldn't be very long before every country would be as barren as the Sahara Desert; barren, not only of trees, but of everything else -- including us!

AS IN THE PHARAOH'S DREAM Some seed is produced every year, but, as it was with the wheat in the Pharaoh's dream, there are years of plenty and years of famine. The years of heavy seed-production vary in frequency with different species. They also depend on weather, climate, and soil.

Light, next to appropriate soil, is most important in the production of seed, just as it is in the growth of the tree; so trees in the open, where they get plenty of light, produce a larger amount of seed than those that are crowded, and they begin seeding at a much earlier age. Twenty-five years is the average age at which open-grown trees begin bearing, while in crowded communities it is forty. Middle-aged trees produce better than very young or very old ones. Recalling what was said in the first sentence about light, you will understand why trees in the forest bear chiefly at the top while those in the open have seeds at the ends of practically all the branches. And, in the forest, trees that are obliged to spend their lives in the shadows of taller neighbors, rarely bear any seeds at all.