CHAPTER V. 



PLANTING THE ORANGE SEED. 



N selecting seed for the nursery, if you intend 

 budding the young trees, you need not be 

 careful as to the quality of fruit from which the 

 seed is taken. The plant from the sour seed, 

 as already stated, will for a few years grow more 

 rapidly, but make a smaller tree than the plant from 

 the sweet fruit. 



If you desire to grow your trees without budding, 

 select only from the best fruit, and from trees not 

 grown in the vicinity of any trees bearing sour or 

 indifferent fruit. All the varieties and even species 

 of the citrus family mix very readily, and if grown 

 in close proximity, seeds from the same tree will 

 give an endless variety of fruits, the tendency, how- 

 ever, being toward the kind produced by the tree 

 from which the fruit is plucked, as the pistils are 

 more apt to be fertilized by pollen from flowers 

 near at hand. 



If sour seed are to be planted, the fruit may be 

 thrown into piles till rotted and the seed washed 

 out from the pulp. But whatever kind is used, do 

 not allow the seed to dry. Put them at once into 

 moist sand, to be kept till ready for planting. 



