SOCIETY OF NOETHEEN ILLINOIS. 215 



made a "clean sweep of them;" all, notwithstanding, our northern 

 friends had laid great stress upon the value of a short root. 



Two other hobbies have, of recent years, gone the ronnds, and 

 many thousand of dollars have been squeezed out of northern plan- 

 ters by interested peddlers "harping" upon the great hardiness and 

 value of budded trees and on trees grafted on whole roots. Even 

 the National Nurserymen's Association has been "soft-soaped" with 

 eloquent essays advocating this precious idea as the ne-pliis-ultra of 

 apple culture for the cold North, and, still we are not happy. Do 

 the perpetrators of these schemes not know that trees produced by 

 either of these modes are even less hardy than those grown by 

 piece-root grafting, inasmuch as the strong, sappy shoots that start 

 out from the collar of a whole root, require a longer season to per- 

 fect and mature its growth than is needed for the less robust grow- 

 ing shoot of the piece-root graft ? And does the public not know, 

 that in spite of the extravagant claims made, many thousands of 

 trees sold as budded, at exhorbitant prices, by those amiable fellows, 

 are simply common root-grafted ones, cut off at the ground at one 

 year old and started anew, which process makes them look for all 

 the world like budded trees ? 



Let me tell you what I know about trees grafted on whole roots. 

 You remember the introduction of the famous Mann apple some 

 seven or eight years ago. It was claimed to be the coming apple — 

 just what we westerners had been looking for, lo, these many years. 

 As hardy as the Dochesse, an enormous bearer of large, delicious fruit, 

 and the best and latest keeper in existence, and last, but not least, 

 the trees all grafted on whole roots. I invested, the trees arrived 

 direct from headquarters, and such roots — long; slender tap roots, a 

 few of them forked but not a single one of them supplied with brace 

 roots to anchor, or hold the tree firmly in place and as a result of such 

 malformation the trees continually swayed about by the wind. I 

 should have staked them but didn't, we don't want to stake our trees 

 here, if they cannot stand up alone they may lie down to it. Well 

 I repeatedly banked them up and firmed them as well as I could and 

 they all made a good fair growth the first season. The following 

 spring one-half of them did not leave out and the second spring I 

 found that the balance had "given up the ghost." Now if you will ] 



invest in that class of trees you may reasonably expect to be quite ' 



as successful. 



We have so far looked mainly upon the shady side of the pic- 

 ture, but as the darkest hour is just before daylight, we can already 

 discern glimpses of the dawning of a brighter day. If you will turn 

 to the transactions of the Iowa State Horticultural Society for 1879, 

 you will there find the report of an investigation of the orchard of 

 Drury Overton, near Knoxville. This orchard contained about 2,000 

 trees and was divided between root and top-grafted trees, the latter 



