BUTLER: ALTERNATE BEARING IN THE APPLE 89 
made to develop by appropriate means. The spur usually de- 
velops from:a bud formed during the previous year, that is from 
two-year-old wood, and requires two seasons’ growth to form a 
flower bud. At the end of the first year the apical bud will be 
surrounded by a rosette of three to four leaves, and at the end of 
the second by a rosette of six to eight leaves, and will have become 
a floral bud, though spurs may develop on a purse that are fertile 
the year of their formation behaving in this respect like the spurs 
of a fruit branch. A spur may live for a number of years becom- 
ing with age more or less branched, depending on the degree to 
which the eyes of the floral axes, or purses develop (PLATE 1, 
FIG. I). 
Besides the methods of flower-bud formation already described 
one other method deserves to be described. In orchards where 
second growth occurs it is not infrequently observed that the 
terminal buds become flower buds immediately.* It should, how- 
ever, be noted that this mode of florification is not exceptional 
in its manner of development. Second growth, except in point 
of origin, is of the nature of a sprig (brindille) and we have seen 
that on this type of fruit-branch apical flower buds form commonly 
the first year of itsdevelopment. We have seen, furthermore, that 
axillary buds on a leader could develop spurs which bore flowers 
the following season, that spurs could develop on a purse that were 
fruitful the following season; that the apical bud of a leader also 
sometimes developed into a spur which flowered the following 
season. Now it is to be noted that the flower-buds formed in 
the several ways above mentioned have this one point in common: 
they grow on the end of a shoot that develops six to eight sessile 
nodes in a single period of vegetation. In other words an apical 
bud subtended by six to eight sessile nodes will be a flower-bud, 
irrespective of the type of branch upon which it develops. The 
development of the flower-buds is then clearly correlated with 
growth. But this growth must be sessile, in other words extremely 
slow and quick maturing, conditions that can only be supplied by 
a scant but sufficient water supply coupled with conditions favor- 
able for photosynthetic activity. 
* Van Mons, L. B. Arbres fruitiers 1: 108. Louvain, 1835; Gourley, J. H., 
loc. cil. : 
