FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES OP PLANT GROWTH. 25 



Fruit Plants from Seed. — While our wild plants come nearly 

 true from seed, our cultivated fruits, which have come from 

 them^ will not come true but will show a decided tendency to 

 resemble the wild, inferior forms. Although an occasional seed- 

 ling may be a decided improvement over the cultivated kinds 

 there is not one chance in a thousand of getting better fruits 

 than those we now have by saving seed. This comes from the 

 fact that we do not grow our fruits from seed but by grafting, 

 budding, etc. If they were grown for many generations from 



Fig. 5.-Showing variation in sizes and shapes of plums grown from 

 the same lot of seed. 



seed it would undoubtedly be possible to get them to come 

 as true to type as our garden vegetables. It must be noticed 

 that a° there are no two plants exactly alike the strongest ten- 

 dency in plants is to be unlike. Some cultivated fruit plants that 

 come nearly true from seed are a few local varieties of the peach, 

 the Wyant plum and such strawberries as the Alpine and St. 

 Anthony de Padua. 



The yearly round of life in plants consists of a rapid 

 growth in the spring, during which time the plant is using up 



