MORE ABOUT PYRUS BACCATA AS AN APPLE STOCK. 225 



MORE ABOUT PYRUS BACCATA AS A SEEDLING 



STOCK. 



PROF, N. E. HANSEN^ BROOKINGS, S. D. 



The following letters should be read in connection with my 

 article on pyrus baccata published in the May "Horticulturist." 



Mr. Roy Underwood of Lake City, Minnesota, writes under date 

 of November i6th, 1903, as follows : "Replying to your favor of 

 the 13th. We have had but little experience with the true pyrus 

 baccata, and so are not in a position to give you any information. 

 We have grown quite a good many apple stocks from the common 

 Siberian crab, the characteristics of which we understand resemble 

 the pyrus baccata and, so far as we have been able to determine, 

 they have no marks of superiority over stock grown from other crabs, 

 such as Early Strawberry, Martha, etc. We have planted seed from 

 the Orange crab quite extensively, having a number of large orchard 

 trees, and we are very much pleased with results. They make fine, 

 vigorous seedlings and unite well in grafting. Our men seem to 

 think that there is not much difference between the nursery trees 

 that are grafted on native apple roots, grown from our common 

 orchard trees, such as Duchess, Wealthy, and those grafted on crab 

 roots, but it is probable that our experiments along this line have not 

 been extensive enough in period of time to give us a safe basis for 

 judgment. This, however, is off from the point on which you de- 

 sired information." 



Mr. Clarence Wedge, of Albert Lea, Minnesota, writes as follows 

 under date of November i6th, 1903 : "In reply to your request for 

 experience with pyrus baccata would say : I have some trees, per- 

 haps 200, of several of our standard sorts, crown-grafted in spring 

 of 1901 on one-year seedlings of the common little Yellow Siberian 

 crab, that now have three years' growth in the nursery. Almost 

 uniformly they appear to have made a smooth union and to have a 

 good root system. They have not made quite as good a growth as 

 we commonly get on trees of that age, but this may be due to 

 location. 



"In spring of 1902 we set out about a thousand seedlings that we 

 had grown from seed sent out by the government, said to have been 

 secured from the native pyrus baccata of northeastern Russia. We 

 put out these little seedlings in the vacancies in a long row of yearling 

 apple root-grafts of the previous season's planting which had made 

 an extremely poor stand. As it happened the snow blew off the 

 portion of the nursery through which this mixed row was planted, 

 and we were much interested to observe that while the root-grafted 



