LEMON ORCHARD FROM BUDS 



OF SINGLE SELECTED TREE 



Remarkable Uniformity of Fruit Compared with Tliose from Ordinary Lemon 

 Orchard from Miscellaneous Buds 



A. D. Shamel, Riverside, Cal. 



THERE exists in California sev- 

 eral citrus orchards in each of 

 which the trees are known to 

 have been propagated from buds 

 selected from a single particularly pro- 

 ductive and desirable parent tree. 



The trees in the Shippey Lisbon 

 lemon orchard of forty acreas, located 

 four miles north of Porterville, Cal., 

 were all grown from buds secured from 

 a very productive and valuable parent 

 tree. Two thousand trees were planted 

 in this orchard. Owing to a root-rot 

 disease 300 trees have died, so that, at 

 the present time 1,700 trees survive. 



The parent tree, located in the Bus- 

 well orchard near Porterville, produced, 

 ill 1902, 1903, and 1904, yields of 24, 

 26, and 28 picking boxes of lemons, 

 respectively. Each of the picking 

 boxes contained about 60 pounds of 

 fruit. In 1905 enough buds were cut 

 from this tree to bud 2,000 sweet orange 

 stocks, or, in other words, to propagate 

 enough trees for the forty-acre orchard. 

 The young trees were grown in the 

 nursery about two years. They were 

 set out in the orchard in 1907. They 

 were arranged in squares 29j/4 by 29^ 

 feet apart. Fifty trees were planted 

 on each acre. 



XO OFF-STRAIN TREES FOUND 



A recent study of this orchard by 

 the writer, after the trees had been 

 planted about ten years, revealed a re- 

 markable uniformity in the type of the 



trees. They all were found to belong 

 to the productive Lisbon strain. Not 

 one off-strain tree was discovered. 

 Some variation in tree characteristics 

 within the strain was found upon close 

 examination. However, to trained ob- 

 servers the uniformity of the trees in 

 all apparent characteristics was truly 

 striking and emphatic. A comparison 

 of the uniformity of the trees in this 

 orchard with the trees of other orchards 

 of the same variety and about the same 

 age, where ordinary methods of secur- 

 ing bud wood had been practiced, 

 sbowed that the trees in this orchard 

 were more uniformly good than those 

 in the other orchards. In Lisbon or- 

 charts where no bud selection, based 

 on performance records and intimate 

 tree knowledge, had been practiced in 

 propagation, it was found that from 

 10 to 70% of the trees were of variable 

 or off-type strains. In the Shippey or- 

 cliard not one such tree was found. 



The yields shown in this table are 

 much greater than is ordinarily the case. 

 It may also be said that the behavior 

 of these trees is very much like that 

 of others which have been more re- 

 cently grown from buds secured from 

 parent trees selected on the basis of 

 their performance records and intimate 

 tree knowledge. For this and other 

 reasons, the writer and others believe 

 that the uniformly early and high pro- 

 duction of good fruits in the Shippey 

 orchard is largely due to bud selection. 



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