ay is through correspondents living at a distance.
These correspondents will send you pollen from a species which blossoms
later further north or earlier further south, at the time which you wish
for your pistillate flowers. For instance, in crossing chinkapins with
oaks, the chinkapins will blossom about the 12th of June in Connecticut
but most of the oaks are through blossoming by the 12th of May. There we
have a month's difference. How can I use oak pollen upon my chinkapin
trees? I do this by sending away up to the northern limits of the growth
of the oak tree, up in Canada. The red oak tree blossoms there in June,
the same species that blossoms with me early in May. Pecan pollen that I
wish to use upon shagbarks and walnuts I get from Texas. Now how are we
to keep pollen when we have collected it, if we are not ready to use it
immediately? I have had pollen sent to me from a distance in tightly
corked bottles. It was probably ruined at the end of three or four days,
because it could not breathe. Every grain of pollen has to breathe just
as surely as a red squirrel in the top of a tree has to breathe. The
pollen grain is a living organism, and if it is sent in a closely corked
bottle it smothers and dies. You must have it sent in paper or wooden
boxes in order to have it in good condition when it arrives, and it must
be kept in a cool place, not too dry and not too damp. If it is kept in
a place that is too damp, various fungi appear, and begin to attack it
at once. If it is too dry, it loses its water content, and its
protoplasm does not make combination with that of the other flower. So
we must keep our pollen in a cool place, not too dry, not too warm and
not too moist, and where it can breathe. We may put it in cold storage
but not at a temperature below freezing. We may put it into the cold
storage which florists use, and keep it for a long while. Some pollen
will keep, viable for three weeks, under these conditions, possibly
longer. It is important to keep your pollen boxes open at the top. They
must be kept where the wind doesn't blow your pollen from one box to
another. I had not been impressed by that point until this year. I had
eight different kinds of pollen about the farm house, in different
rooms, in order to be sure to keep them far apart. One day on my arrival
from town ready for pollenating a number of trees, I found that a very
neat housekeeper had found it undesirable to keep such boxes scattered
ab