BIO-DYNAMICS 107 



In a discourse on Horticultural Investigations at the 

 Woburn Experimental Fruit Farm, delivered at the Royal 

 Institution on Friday, February 21st, reported in Nature 

 (28/8/13, page 6T5), Mr. Spencer U. Pickering, F.R.S., tells 

 us : 



As it is impossible to reproduce a fruit-tree of any given variety 

 from seed, other methods of multiplication must be adopted, namely, 

 budding or grafting. A young tree of a similar character is taken (the 

 stock), and in the one case a bud or, in the other case a twig (scion), 

 from the tree to be propagated is united with the stem of the stock. 

 All the growth arising from this bud, or buds, is similar to that of the 

 tree from which it was taken ; the stock acts as little else than a channel 

 for conveying nourishment to the ingrafted buds, yet it does exert a 

 certain influence on the character of the growth of the scion. For apples, 

 we use two classes of stocks : the one, the crab stock, is obtained by 

 sowing the seeds of crab-apples, and is characterised by forming a scanty 

 number of roots, but these are stout and have a tendency to obtain deep 

 hold of the ground ; the other, the paradise stock, is derived from a 

 French variety of apple, and forms a much larger number of roots, but 

 smaller, and tending to spread out near the surface of the ground. The 

 grafted tree partakes of the character of the roots of the stock : on the 

 paradise stock it becomes more spreading in its habit and grows less 

 vigorously than on the crab stock, and whilst the former is more suitable 

 for growing trees in the bush form, the crab stock is more suited for 

 standard trees. 



What emerges is this : Originally, and for vast periods of 

 time, the apple tree was capable of reproducing from seed. 

 Before its character was changed by cultivation it drew on 

 the (unsurfeited) soil, thus performing wholesome physiological 

 labour, which conduced to a considerable degree of strength 

 and vitality with corresponding bulk, and this pari passu 

 with an increasing degree of bio-economic usefulness and of 

 survival capacity. Now the cultivated apple has lost its power, 

 but it is to these inherited endowments, i.e., to the wholesome 

 Bio-Dynamics (symbiotics) of the species apple still retained 

 by the robuster wild stocks, that we have recourse for the 

 rejuvenescence of our otherwise degenerating apple-trees. 

 Domestication, which, according to Prof. Punnett, is 

 frequently a process of continuous loss, so far as ancestral 



