Birds Did It First

The luckiest seeds in nature are swallowed by birds, then dropped on their future sprouting places encased in pellets of fertilizer. Fruits and berries tempt birds to serve as airborne seed-planters.

What nature finds successful, man does well to copy. So thought Dr. Lytle S. Adams of San Diego, who likes to think up new jobs for airplanes. This month, backed by U.S. Government funds, he is flying back & forth across the denuded pasture lands of the Papago Indian Reservation in Arizona. From his Bellanca Pacemaker drops a stream of pellets.

Each of the pea-sized pellets contains in a clay matrix a few husked germs of Lehmann's Lovegrass (a hardy, dry-weather forage crop), a dash of fertilizer and a pinch of insect-&-rodent repellent. Scattered from a "centrifugal planter" (a rimless wheel with spokes of finch pipe), they will seed a swath about 1,000 ft. wide, at the rate of one pellet per square foot. If moisture, sun and temperature conditions are right, the seeds should germinate in the double-quick time of 48 hours, and each will start life with a helpful inheritance of rich, fertile soil.

If this new seeding method makes the Papago Reservation lush with Lovegrass, Dr. Adams intends to try it on other denuded regions in the dry Southwest. He looks forward to the time when his man-made bird-pellets will be used to reseed all Western rangelands every ten years.

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