How Trees are Multiplied 



covers itself again with a thicket of sucl^ers, and every twig it 

 lost is a hale yearling tree on its own roots. This is the way to 

 get willows and poplars in the nursery rows. It is quicker and 

 surer and easier than planting the seed. 



Any tree that sends up suckers from the root will yield young 

 trees as fast as you can dig them up. Loss stimulates the parent 

 tree to greater feats of production. 



The highest form of tree multiplication is grafting, and its 

 kindred practice, budding. It is among the oldest arts, dis- 

 coursed upon by writers since the dawn of literature. It consists 

 in setting a part of one plant upon another in order that the two 

 may become united by growth into one living structure. The 

 rooted plant is the stock; the added part, a piece of a twig with 

 one or more buds, is called the cion. 



Grafting is the act of making this union. The graft is the 

 union, or joint, thus formed. Budding is essentially the same 

 process. The difference is that instead of a cion a single bud is 

 joined to the stock, only enough of the twig being used to give 

 the bud a foundation. 



The object of grafting and budding is to produce a tree 

 whose character shall be twofold. The top that grows above 

 the graft or bud shall have the better fruit or other character- 

 istics of the tree from which the cion or bud came. The stock 

 retains its own character, for example, straight growth, deep 

 root system or resistance to diseases. The stock is the nurse 

 tree, feeding the top, which flowers and fruits after its own kind. 

 Its leaves and mode of branching are characteristic of the new, 

 ingrafted variety, else the process would be useless. 



Cultivated trees rarely "come true" from seed. They 

 "revert" to the original wild species from which varieties have 

 so recently sprung. For seedlings change their natures very 

 gradually, and the forming of varieties in plants is a modern 

 innovation, compared with the unnumbered centuries during 

 which seed bearing has gone on in the wilds. 



Grafting and budding serve four purposes: i. The per- 

 petuation of a desired variety. 2. The multiplying of its num- 

 bers. 3. The production of dwarfs. 4. The production of hardy 

 varieties. 



A nurseryman's business is largely the accomplishment of 

 these ends, and the supplying of planters with the results of his 



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