164 MINNESOTA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



nursery. This gave a strongly branched root system instead of 

 one long tap-root, as is often found in one year orchard apple 

 seedlings. Such trees are not dwarfed in the nursery usually, as 

 I noticed in Russia and have demonstrated since at the Experi- 

 ment Station at Brookings. Two year old trees budded on Pyrus 

 baccata are one year ahead of the grafted tree, the two year top 

 being fully equal to a three year top of a piece-root grafted tree. 



6. One Russian nursery claims there is no material dwarf- 

 ing of apple trees on Pyrus baccata stock. As Pyrus baccata is 

 somewhat variable, the same as our native plum, in size and 

 quality of tree and size and habit of tree, there is of course some 

 room for experiment on this stock. 



7. Lucas, one of the foremost pomologists in Germany, 

 recommends Pyrus baccata as a stock for especially severe sit- 

 uations and states that trees acquire a size intermediate between 

 standard trees and those on dwarf stocks such as Doucin. The 

 fruit is not dwarfed in the least. The effect of more or less 

 imperfect union in grafting or budding is always to cause earlier 

 fruitfulness, the sap being kept back in the top to some extent, 

 changing the wood buds into blossom buds. 



8. In Russia the Pyrus baccata was not used for a stock 

 save where it was absolutely necessary, as at Kiev, in southern 

 Russia, where French pears are raised successfully, the apple 

 seed that was handiest to get, either native Russian, French or 

 German, being used. 



9. In the prairie northwest nurserymen have long deluded them- 

 selves and their customers with the idea of using a long scion on 

 a short root, so that the tree would ultimately get on its own 

 roots. This will do very well far enough south, but there is a 

 considerable area of the northwest where all the scion-roots of 

 the hardiest varieties winter-kill. If nurserymen desire to send 

 into this section trees that will live, they must wholly reform 

 their present method of propagation. 



10. In the drier soils as we go northwest in this region, 

 apple trees, emit roots with far less rapidity from the scion in the 

 nursery. In dry seasons it is only a myth. 



11. Some ajgue that a seedling from ? Vermont apple seed 

 is hardier than a French crab. This is true in a measure, but as 

 we go north the only difference between the two is that the 

 French crab kills "deader," so to speak, than the Vermont apple 

 seedling, but both kill dead enough. The only real difference 

 between the two is that the Vermont apple seedling orchards 

 date back to England most likely, while the French crabs are 



