HYBRIDISED TREES

Evening Star, Issue 19659, 12 September 1927, Page 6

HYBRIDISED TREES

EASTER GROWTH. East-growing hybrid poplar trees grown as a farm crop may before long compete with corn and cotton for a place in a farmer’s fields. To meet the ever-increasing demand lor wood pulp for paper mailing, rayon, and other industries, three scientists, representing an alliance between botany and chemistry, and also between pure research and applied science in industry, have underla ken to see what can bo done about getting new varieties of trees big enough to use injess time than it takes the natural species to grow in the forest. These three men —Dr A. B. Stout, of the New York .Botanical Garden, Dr Ralph it. M'Kcc, of Columbia University, and E. ,1. Schreiner, of tho Oxford Paper Company—-now announce in New York that they have succeeded in obtaining new hybrid varieties of popular that will reach a trunk diameter of ]Sin in eighteen years, giving a total of 100 cords to the acre. Part of the crop can he harvested at the end of ten years, to thin out the stand, and the balance when tho trees have matured.

The unusually rapid growth ol tho new varieties, the investigators explain. is due to a phenomenon long known to breeders, called “ hybrid vigor.” It is not at all well understood. hut in plant and animal husbandry it is much used to obtain thriftier crops and stronger and larger livestock than can be got by sticking to unmixed species. Ihe superior strength and endurance of the, mule, a, hybrid between the horse and tho donkey, arc credited to this hybrid vigor, and many of our best field and garden crops have been obtained in tho same way. A few tentative experiments have been made in the past with hybrid forest trees, hut the present work is the first endeavor to apply the principle to the development of a tree needed for a group of major industrial operations.