872 THE FRUIT INDUSTRY IN THE STATE OF XEW YORK 



STANDARD STOCKS 



What we in America call standard stocks are seedlings of the 

 common apple, Pyrus mains. There is a mistaken notion that 

 these stocks come from seeds of Pyrus baccata, or hybrids of it, 

 which constitute onr crab apples. It is doubtful whether true 

 crab seeds are often, if ever, planted for standard stocks. Until 

 recent years, all, or nearly all, standard stocks for this country 

 were imported from France and Belgium under the name " French 

 Crab,' 7 with the implication, too often given credence by nursery- 

 men, that they were seedlings of true crabs. 



There are at least two kinds of standard stocks: those grown 

 from seeds of wild apples and seedlings of cultivated varieties. 

 Were choice possible, there should be no hesitation on the part of 

 fruit growers to take seedlings from wild trees. It is difficult, 

 however, to obtain seeds from wild trees, and most of the apple 

 stocks now used by nurserymen come from seeds taken from cider 

 mills. Since all cultivated varieties of apples may go to the cider 

 mill, the resulting seedlings cannot fail to be variable, giving 

 good, bad, and indifferent stocks. 



DWARFING STOCKS 



Apples are dwarfed by grafting or budding them on small- 

 growing forms of the cultivated species of this fruit. What are 

 these species ? Scarcely any two botanists who have studied the 

 apple agree. Accepting the best authority, we must look on 

 dwarfing stocks as diminutive forms of the species from which 

 come most of our cultivated apples. 



Watching seedling apples, one finds that the variation in the 

 size of the plants coming from miscellaneous seeds is considerable. 

 Unquestionably careful selection of the most dwarfed forms of 

 seedling trees would give us dwarfing stocks similar to those now 

 in common use. Unquestionably, too, the dwarf or unproductive 

 or scraggly-growing trees of this or that variety to be found in 

 many orchards owe these qualities to the stock and not to the scion. 

 There are, possibly, a score of named seedling stocks, but of these 

 we are concerned in this experiment with but two, French Para- 

 dise and Doucin. 



