yielding oak, but where are the best wild parent trees for these orchards? No one knows where they are. The task of finding the parent trees may be long and difficult. We see how great it is when Sargent mentions fifty species[1] of oak trees as being native to the United States. Sudworth, United States Forest Service, said there were one hundred and seventy species of oaks. There are many varieties of hickory. The honey locust tree and the persimmon, species of great promise for crop production, are each growing over a million square miles of land. How would you find the best tree? When it comes to persimmons we need a half dozen best trees; one ripening in August, one in September, one in October, one in November, one that drops its fruit in December, and yet another which drops it in January. There are such wild persimmon trees already growing in the United States.
Yet more! Foreign countries need to be carefully searched in the quest for parent trees. Something has already been done, but the task is only begun. It may be that the best crop trees are growing in some little valley in Spain, Portugal, Jugoslavia, Asia Minor, Persia, the Himalayas, or the remote interior lands of southwestern China, which seems to be such a wonderland of trees.
2. Hybridizing to Produce Better Trees
There is little doubt that we could start a good tree agriculture by merely propagating the best wild trees, but if agricultural science has worked out any result it is this: the purposeful hybridization by man of existing trees can produce trees that are much better for agricultural purposes than those nature has produced. This work should use both native and introduced trees. A dozen men could at once go to work on the various oak species, a half dozen on the chestnuts, and an-
- ↑ There are also natural hybrid oaks scattered about the United States. No one has any idea where or how many.
