PYEUS BACCATA AS A STOCK FOR THE APPLE. 1/5 



are budded a trifle cheaper. 'The pkim is more capricious about 

 the time of grafting or budding. 



Mr. Wm. Tanner: Have you ever tried the seed of the 

 common wild crab? 



Prof. Hansen : Yes, I tried that at Brookings. I grew seed- 

 lings from wild crab seed gathered at Des Moines. Iowa, and I 

 had only one left out of some 900 the following spring, and that 

 died later. The general experience is that the wild crab and the 

 tame apple do not make a good union. They are too dissimilar 

 in wood. 



Mr. C. G. Patten (Iowa): I would like to make a few re- 

 marks upon the subject under discussion. I wish to say first 

 that I believe Prof. Hansen struck the keynote of this whole ex- 

 periment when he said that in the south you could grow any- 

 thing, whereas in the northwest it was a matter of experiment. 

 Now I think there should be special emphasis laid upon the 

 points we are talking about. In Dakota, where he is, the condi- 

 tions are so entirely different that he must and is compelled to 

 have a different stock. Now I cannot agree with the professor's 

 conclusions that all that you need here in Minnesota or in Wis- 

 consin or in a large portion of Iowa is the Pyrus baccata stock. 

 While I am entirely willing to concede that he may be success- 

 ful in Dakota, yet if he still goes further north he will need more 

 hardiness than is found in the Pyrus baccata. 



I have made a statement similar to this before : Some twenty 

 years ago or more I planted a large number of seedlings from 

 this Pyrus baccata, of both the Cherry crab and the small Yel- 

 low Siberian crab. I grew about sixty thousand seedlings, and 

 I made the most thorough experiments with apples of sixteen 

 or seventeen varieties root-grafted. That experiment was an en- 

 tire failure, and it did not take long to ascertain that it was a 

 failure. The first two or three years those trees grew with real 

 vigor. I thought very much of the experiment; I thought it 

 was going to be a success; but the third year in taking them up 

 I found the root was not in proportion to the top. In the fourth 

 year the discrepancy was still greater, and that ratio continued 

 with the age of the tree until the root was so dwarfed that the 

 tree would tip right over. 



The professor has come to the conclusion in root-grafting 

 that it is a failure even with the Pyrus baccata, so he must of 

 necessity use budding. For instance, he must of necessity graft 

 or bud above the ground, and my observation leads me to the 

 conclusion, and a positive one too, that he must bud probably 

 eight to sixteen inches above the ground in order to get results, 

 in order that the influence of the scion and the stock, as you see 

 it illustrated here, may work in harmony. If you had seen this 

 previously (indicating) you would probably have seen no dif- 

 ference between the size of the scion and the size of the stock, 

 because the influence of the top balanced the influence of the 

 stock, and that is the thought that I presume will develop from 

 Prof. Hansen's theory of grafting on this Siberian. But if a foot 



