MUTUAL INFLUENCE OF THE STOCK AND GRAFT. 113 



much fewer seeds than usual. He also grafted the artichoke upon the 

 common sunflower and produced upon the stem of the latter, above the 

 graft but near the ground, tuberous swellings like those of the dahlia. 

 Mr. Maule, 1 an English gardener, states that he grafted the potato upon 

 the bitter-sweet and produced tubers on the roots of the latter. Professor 

 Beal of Michigan records 2 that some one set a potato scion in a tomato 

 plant and induced the latter to form small tubers in the axils of its leaves. 

 Director Speer of the Iowa experiment station, says that a feeble graft 

 often induces in the roots of the stock a tendency to throw up suckers, 

 and that this tendency may be checked by regrafting the stock with a 

 vigorous variety. Professor Kirtland of Ohio says* that " a graft of the 

 Green Newton Pippin will invariably render the bark of the stock rough 

 and black (the habit of the variety) within three years after its insertion." 

 The Leon le Clerc pear is given as another example of a variety which has 

 been observed to modify the character of the bark of the stock. 4 



No effect of the scion on the stock is more remarkable than the often 

 noticed influence on the character of the roots. A writer from Plymouth, 

 Michigan, says: 5 " In the nursery where we take pieces of seedling apple 

 roots, and graft scions of different varieties of apple on them, the roots in 

 one year partake of the characteristics of the variety grafted in. A variety 

 having a straight, upright top sends down a few correspondingly straight 

 roots. A variety with a thick, spreading top makes numerous spreading 

 roots. * * * Where buds are put into two-year-old seedling apple trees, 

 the seedlings being variable, it requires several years to change the roots, 

 to make the nursery trees of a variety similar, and the time required 

 to change with a weak-growing graft is greater than with a strong-grower, 

 the trunk and roots still performing their office for the original variety. " 



" The graft, " says 0. A. Green of Kochester, N. Y., in the New York 

 Tribune, B "has a remarkable effect on the roots of the stock. In starting 

 apple trees in the nursery we graft on roots of seedlings, all of which, if 

 unaffected by the graft, would exhibit no especial character; but when we 

 dig these roots, after being affected by the graft for three or four years, 

 we find that those grafted with Red Astrachan, for instance, are very 

 fibrous, branching out near the surface with few tap roots, while the rows 

 adjoining, or parts of the same row, grafted with the Duchess of Olden- 

 burg, or the Fameuse, are destitute of fibers, possess only three coarse 

 prongs, as a rule, one of which is liable to be a tap root, seeking an abode 

 far down in the subsoil. It takes my men twice as long to dig a row of 

 Fameuse or Duchess as a row of Red Astrachan, and when planted the 

 roots of all were of the same character." J. B. Moore of Massachusetts, 

 says: 7 "Every nurseryman knows that the character of roots is changed, 

 and that the roots of a row of Baldwin apple trees in the nursery will be 

 alike, and the roots of a row of Roxbury Russets will be alike, and will 

 differ from those of the Baldwins. " O. B. Hadwin adds, in the same con- 

 nection, that "if part of the same lot of pear stocks are grafted with Bart- 

 letts and a part with Onondaga, the two varieties can be distinguished by 



1 Gardeners' Chronicle, 1876, pp. 532, 538. 



a Report Mich. State Board of Agriculture, 1876, p. 204. 



3 Horticulturist, Vol. II, p. 544. 



* Josiah Hoops, Proc. Am. Pom. Soc, 1873, p. 130. 



5 Country Gentlemen, 1882, p. 812. 



6 Quoted in Rural New Yorker, 1880, p. 506. 



7 Transactions Massachusetts Harticultural society, 1880, p. 109. 



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