CHAPTER V. 



GRAFTAGE. 



Graftage. The process or operation of grafting or budding, or the 

 state or condition of being grafted or budded. 



Grafting. The operation of inserting a bud or a cion in a stock. It 

 is commonly restricted to the operation of inserting cions of two or more 

 buds, in distinction from budding, or the operation of inserting a single 

 bud in the stock ; but there are no essential differences between the two 

 operations. 



Stock. In graftage, a plant or part of a plant upon which a cion or 

 bud is set. A free stock is a seedling, in distinction from a grafted stock. 



Cion or Scion. A portion of a plant which is mechanically inserted upon 

 the same or another plant (stock) with the intention that it shall grow. 



GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS. Graftage is rarely em- 

 ployed for the propagation of the species, as seedage 

 and cuttage are more expeditious and cheaper. Its 

 chief use is to perpetuate a variety which does not re-produce 

 itself from seeds and which cannot be economically grown from 

 cuttings. 



Nearly all the named varieties of tree fruits and many of 

 those of ornamental trees and shrubs are perpetuated by means 

 of graftage. In some species which present no marked varie- 

 ties, however, propagation by seeds or cuttings is for various 

 reasons so difficult or uncertain that recourse must be had to 

 graftage. This is particularly true in many of the firs and 

 spruces which do not produce seeds to any extent in cultiva- 

 tion. In other cases graftage is performed for the purpose of 

 producing some radical change in the character or habit of the 

 plants, as in the dwarfing of pears by grafting them upon the 

 quince, the elevation of weeping tops by working them upon 

 upright trunks, and the acceleration of fruit-bearing by setting 

 cions in old plants. It is sometimes employed to aid the healing 

 of wounds or to repair and fill out broken tops. And it has 

 been used to make infertile plants fertile, by grafting in the mis- 



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