The following paper was read by R. M. Kellogg, 



BUD VARIATION IN THE STRAWBERRY PLANT 



R, M. Kellogg, Three Rivers, Mich. 



No plant affords better opportunities for studying bud variations than 

 the strawberry. New plants can be propagated and fruited every year, 

 and while to the novice they all appear alike, yet a careful examination 

 will show constant changes going on in its vascular system making it 

 possible to greatly improve them through the agency of selection. 



Bud variation may be denned as any change in the vascular system 

 of a plant which shall cause it to produce a different fruit either in form, 

 quality or quantity. 



To me it is surpassingly strange that the theory has been so generally 

 accepted that all plants and trees propagated by buds are stable in their ' 

 character, when the orchardist can find, not only certain trees but many 

 limbs on bearing trees which produce different fruit for years in succession, 

 and the berry grower can hardly 'walk through his plant bed without seeing 

 a variety oi types in fruit and a vastly different degree in their productive- 

 ness. The complexity in the organism of the plant is as great as that of 

 the man, and shall we say that a man born weak in parts of the body shall 

 spend his days without change? Is not the college curriculum for the 

 development of the brain and the gymnasium for the weak parts of the 

 body? Was the athlete born an athlete or is he a product of development 

 after his birth. Here we have no argument, but when it comes to devel- 

 oping any part of the physical organism of a plant so as to make it produce 

 different results, it is said that it cannot be done. This is an error which 

 has misled the fruit grower and robbed him of the pleasures and profits 

 of his business. 



For the past nineteen years I have conducted experimental plats with 

 the view of devising means of developing a stronger fruit-producing organ- 

 ism in the strawberry plant while in the nursery bed, and results of these 

 experiments have proven conclusively that it can be done. 



From the first I have felt the force of the remark by Prof. Bailey that 

 "We need not so much varieties with new names as we do a general 

 increase in productiveness and efficiency of the types we already possess," 

 and so my efforts have been directed to breeding into the plant a stronger 

 vascular fruit-producing organism by favorable environment and continual 

 selection. To determine if such change could be effected, I made experi- 

 ments along as widely divergent lines as possible, holding that if there was 



