168 THE PLANT WORLD. 



THE VARIETAL FRUIT CHARACTERS OF PLANTS. 



By Chakles A. White. 



THE term frnit-character is here used to designate the sum of 

 those peculiarities which distinguish each of the recognized 

 varieties of fruit, or of food products, of cultivated plants, 

 such as form, size, color, flavor, consistence and nutrient properties; 

 and the object of the following remarks is to trace in untechnica} 

 language the shifting location within the plant of those and other 

 varietal characters in their manifest, and more especially in their occult 

 state. 



The maintenance of plant varieties is accomplished partly by pro- 

 pagation from seed which has received pure pollination and partly by 

 subdivision of already improved plants into cuttings or scions and 

 either the grafting or re-rooting of the same. Some plants when re- 

 produced from seed that has been fertilized by pollen from flowers of 

 the same variety will produce fruit true to their respective varieties, 

 and some will not. In the latter case, however, scions or cuttings will 

 always produce plants that are true to their varietal nature, though 

 separated from the parent stock and made to live under changed con- 

 ditions These facts are respectively exemplified by the perfect re- 

 production from year to year of fine varieties of garden vegetables 

 from their seed; by the production of different, and usually worthless, 

 fruit from grape vines, garden shrubs and orchard trees which have 

 grown from seed, and by the perfect reproduction of the fruit char- 

 acters of each kind of those woody plants by means of scions or cut- 

 tings. 



It is when we consider the impunity with which we are able to 

 subdivide the woody plants referred to, and yet preserve their life and 

 varietal nature in each subdivision, and how small a proportion of 

 any plant is seen by ordinary observation to be concerned in the pro- 

 cess of fruit production, that we are strongly led to inquire in w^hat 

 particular parts of the plant does the varietal nature of the plant 

 and of its fruit occultly reside, and how is it transmitted from plant to 

 plant and from one part of a plant to other parts of the same? In the 

 case of those plants whose varieties of fruit or of food products are per- 

 petuated by the reproduction of the plant from seed, all the varietal char- 

 acteristics, while they may in a general way be said \o be common pro- 

 perty of the whole plant, unquestionably exists in inuiiediatcly trans- 



