GENERAL FRUITS. 151 



GENERAL FRUITS. 



INFLUENCE OF STOCK ON THE LIFE OF TREES. 



BY PROF. J. L. BUDD, A3IES, IA. 



Mr. President: — I am informed that I am down on your program for a 

 paper on the above subject. In a very brief way I will only at this time 

 call attention to the popular beliefMn the parts of Europe where horticul- 

 ture was old before America was discovered, which is that all orchard 

 fruits should be on their own roots or top-worked on indigenous wild 

 stocks. What we know as root grafting has long been known but never 

 practiced. Indeed this belief at this time is being narrowed down by 

 many experts to the exclusive use of trees on their own roots. 



Recently the noted author of "'Propagation and Improvement of Culti- 

 vated Plants,'' Mr. F. W. Burbridge, wrote these significant words: 

 "Looking at grafting from all points of view I am convinced that we 

 should have had better fruit trees, and better and healthier and more 

 prolific varieties in our gardens today, had grafting never been invented." 

 Yet when compared with the general writings of this gifted author we 

 find that he does not denounce the use of congenial hardy stocks. His 

 sweeping statement was predicated on the fact that in Europe and Amer- 

 ica certain fruit stocks have come into general use which are not congenial 

 to the varieties worked upon them, such as the use in this country com- 

 mercially of French crab apple stocks, tender seedlings grown from scrub 

 apples taken to the cider mills, French pear stocks, Myrobalan and St. 

 Julian plum stocks, and Mazzard and Mahaleb cherry stocks. 



TREES FROM ROOT CUTTINGS. 



Mr. Burbridge, Mr. Robinson, and others, have called attention to the 

 fact that in parts of France, Germany, Bohemia, North Silesia, and 

 Russia, are found many sections where trees have been grown for the past 

 one hundred years exclusively from sprouts or root cuttings. In such 

 places the trees are healthy, long lived, and fruitful. On the other hand 

 they call attention to the sections in which grafting on commercial stocks 

 has been long practiced, where varieties once thought valuable seem to 

 be running out, and where disease and the attacks of the fungi, are 

 each year becoming more general. In such neighborhoods a change 

 to trees grown from root cuttings would not be easy for the reason that 

 the material for root cuttings is lacking as with us. The inducement for 

 a change of policy is less urgent than with us as the climate is more 

 equable and the orchard troubles are trifling compared with ours. 



If our people can only be convinced that trees grown from root cuttings 

 are best we can soon have an abundant stock of roots that will bring 

 trees true to name. By the use of short roots and long scions we can 

 cause the apple, pear, cherry, plum, prune and apricot, to root from the 

 scion in nursery, and when set in orchard the seedling part can be cut 

 away. At Ames we now have many trees on their own roots, and we are 

 new starting trees in this way. The cuttings can be made and treated in 

 the common way adopted with the blackberry and red raspberry, but 



