A seedling transplanting head for transferring seedlings planted in a tray (10) to an automatic planting machine. The transplanting head grasps a row of seedlings wherein the stem of each seedling is held by grippers (46) while its root ball is impaled upon a prong (48). The row of seedlings is moved away from the tray to remove foliage and root ball interconnections between plants in adjacent rows. The spacing between adjacent plants in the removed row is then increased and blades (39) passed between each adjacent pair of plants to remove interconnections between seedlings. Each separated seedling is then dropped into a receptacle (5) on an endless conveyor (6) whose path includes the input to the planting machine. Two sets of receptacles are provided so that one may off-load seedlings to the planting machine while the other receives the next row of seedlings.
