FOREST TREES

Evening Post, Volume CVIII, Issue 152, 24 December 1929, Page 7

FOREST TREES

SEED FROM CANADA

A VALUABLE SERVICE

(From "The Post's" Representative.) VANCOUVER, 13th November.-

Four thousand pounds of seed, "of the yellow pine, obtained from cones collected in the Kamloopa district "of British Columbia, are being prepare^ at the Canadian Government's seed extracting station in New Westminster, for shipment to New Zealand. This is not tne first shipment of seeds ofi Canadian trees to" be sent to other conn, tries from the New Westminster plant, which was established in 1921 and has been described as the largest of ■ its kind in the world. ;

In that plant large quantities of cones, collected in the forests of Britisn Columbia, are put through the process necessary to strip them of tha seeds they contain. This seed is in. tended to be employed in. afforestation or reforestation in this and other countries. A large part of the output of the !N ew Westminster plant has beea available for export. Some of tha seed has been shipped to Australia and ■New Zealand and some to Great Britain for the use of the forestry commission appointed there some years ago. In the first few years"of operation of: the station in New Westminster about 14,000 pounds of seed, mostly of Sitka spruce and Douglas fir, were sent thence to the British commission. Th» commission believed that these species of trees, which flourish in British CoX umbia, would grow satisfactorily in the British Isles :.nd would be in time a valuable addition to the timber resources in the State forests there. The 14,000 pounds of seed were sufficient it was estimated, to produce enoueli plants for reforestation of 50,000 acres of land. The seed was sown throughout the British Isles and germinated well in the nurseries. Most of the seed was used by the forestry commisifnrp T lts <a work °* enlarging the State forests. Some of it. was sold to nurserymen and to private persons. Through the seed extraction .station in New Westminster, Canada is thus heJpmg to add to the forest resources of other parts of the British Empire As a result of the shipment of tree seeds to Great Britain, Australia, and New Zealand, Canadians who visit those countnes in years to come may. see there forests of conifers whose ancestors grew in Canada on the shores oi the Pacific, just as Australians may now see their beloved eucalyptus flourishing all over California and in tar north as Tacoma in: the State:o£ Washington.