392 THE GARDENER. [Sept. 



FRUITING YOUNG PINE -APPLE PLANTS. 



It is now becoming a well-established rule that the sooner a Pine-plant 

 can be fruited, the finer will the fruit be in proportion to the size and 

 age of the plant. This has frequently been illustrated, and very ably 

 this season by Mr Miles, gardener to Lord Carrington, who has exhi- 

 bited noble fruits of several varieties from plants not more than sixteen 

 months old ; and it has several times been proved that suckers taken 

 from the parent plants in the ordinary way in August can be made to 

 ripen excellent fruit in the same and following months of the succeed- 

 ing year. It must, however, be remembered that there are suckers 

 and suckers. Such as are now being referred to are not suckers taken 

 from plants in August, from which plants the fruit was cut in the 

 previous May and June ; but suckers taken from plants in the ordinary 

 way as soon as the fruit are cut. In the former case, suckers should 

 be regarded, as compared with the latter, three and four months old 

 when potted. And instances of such success as has been referred to 

 should not be based on suckers that have been, what may be termed, 

 wet-nursed for three or four months beyond the ordinary time. 



But there can be no denying the fact that to fruit Pines satisfactorily 

 in either twelve or sixteen months, the suckers to begin with must be 

 first-rate. What can be more unlike than suckers taken from a poor 

 attenuated set of old parent plants, that have been two or more years 

 old before starting into fruit, and others taken from short broad-leaved 

 vigorous young plants 1 The latter have in them a foundation for the 

 most successful culture ; the former may be improved so as to yield in 

 their turn an improved crop of young stocky plants, but it takes a few 

 years to bring them to a thoroughly satisfactory condition. 



There is nothing remarkable in the fact that a young Pine-plant 

 swells the finest fruit in proportion to its size and age. For, generally 

 speaking, all fruit-bearing plants do the same, being more vigorous 

 than plants that have become, what may be termed, bordering on the 

 stunted stage of existence : especially is this referable to plants in pots. 

 A Pine-plant that is allowed to feed for too long a time from the soil 

 afforded by an ordinary-sized Pine-pot, must of necessity lose some 

 of its youthful vigour and stamina. It exhausts all the native elements 

 of food which the fine fresh fibry maiden turf originally contained. 

 The fibre decays, and the mechanical texture of the soil becomes 

 compressed and too solid for Pine-roots, and no additional stimulus 

 can wholly restore this exhaustion and change. The roots of the Pine 

 change with age, from the great greedy white orchid-like roots, and 

 become a comparatively tangled mass of smaller and less effective 

 workers. The stem of the Pine-Apple, too, gets harder and more solid 



