VARIATION IN ORANGES FROM A SINGLE TREE 
This Washington navel orange tree was grown from a single bud. 
as favorable as possible for the production of uniform fruit. 
fruit is far from uniform, some being good and some nearly worthless. 
Conditions, were, therefore, 
Yet it is obvious that the 
The existence of 
such a condition in orange groves has been the cause of great financial loss in the past, 
but by the practice of bud selection, this loss is being gradually eliminated. 
mechanically injured. In practice we 
rarely attempt to save the fruits cut off 
with the budwood, on account of the 
extra time needed to care for them 
properly and insure their freedom from 
injuries. 
Our practice is to use this budwood as 
soon as cut from the tree, or as soon as 
practicable. If it is desirable to hold it 
for some time, the budwood should be 
packed in moist, not wet, sphagnum 
moss, and stored in a cool place. If the 
budwood is likely to be kept for a long 
period, we would advise first moistening 
the moss in which the budwood is to be 
stored, then sterilizing it with live steam 
for an hour or more, afterwards drying 
the moss by running it through an 
ordinary clothes wringer. 
We cut all budwood possible from a 
select tree, tie 1t in a bundle, and place a 
S56 
(Fig. 8.) 
tag with the bundle, bearing the parent 
tree number. The buds from a parent 
tree are all inserted in order and the 
budded trees numbered, so that the buds 
can be traced back at any time to the 
parent tree. Whenever practicable, we 
would like to see this plan carried out so 
that additional knowledge of the results 
of bud selection may become available 
for the benefit of the citrus industry as 
a whole. 
BUD IN THE SPRING 
The best time for cutting buds and 
budding varies with conditions so much 
that no general rule can be given in 
this respect. Fall budding, allowing the 
buds to remain dormant until spring, 
has been frequently found to be satis- 
factory. As arule, however, our obser- 
vation has been that spring budding, 
