CHAPTER XVIII 

 PROPAGATION OF THE FRUITS 



The number of plants of any of the fruits can be increased 

 in one or more of four different ways, namely, from seeds, 

 by layering, by cuttings, and by grafting. 



Planting the seeds of a desirable variety in order to get 

 more of that variety is not very satisfactory, because usually 

 the new trees or bushes will not bear the same kind of fruit 

 as the one from which the seed came. For example, if we 

 were to plant the seeds from a Baldwin apple the young trees 

 from those seeds would not bear Baldwin apples, because the 

 blossom which produced the Baldwin apple was probably fer- 

 tilized with pollen from the blossoms of a different kind of 

 apple. The seeds in the new apple will produce trees which 

 will have some of the qualities of both kinds of apples. When 

 one smells a dandelion blossom he gets some yellow dust in 

 his nose; this is 'pollen. When pollen is carried from one 

 flower to another the second flower is said to be fertilized by 

 the first. The bees and the wind are active agents in carrying 

 pollen. The seeds from plums, grapes, gooseberries, straw- 

 berries, and all other fruits act in the same way as those from 

 apples. 



Layering is a common method of getting new plants of 

 black-cap raspberries, dewberries, and strawberries. In lay- 

 ering the plants are covered with soil at the ends or at the 



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