GRAFTING 69 



the species used as a stock, and many of the varieties which 

 are grafted upon it. There does not appear to be a record 

 of the first employment of the grafting method for this 

 section of Rhododendrons ; it was probably turned to 

 account in the propagation of the earliest hybrids raised 

 in this country between the Indian R. arboreum and the 

 other hardier species which had previously held the field as 

 garden shrubs. The excitement caused by these hybrids 

 raised at Highclere, Hants, and flowered for the first time 

 over eighty years ago, may have led nurserymen, in their 

 efforts to quickly work up stock of them, to resort to 

 grafting. 



Before 1850 grafting had become general, discussions 

 having taken place about that time with respect to its 

 advantages and disadvantages. Thus we read in the 

 Gardeners' Chronicle for 1850 that, although grafting was 

 then the means most generally preferred for the increase 

 of new varieties of Rhododendrons, attempts had already 

 been made to prove that the grafted plants were, as a rule, 

 short-lived and unhealthy, and that whilst grafting increased 

 their tendency to flower, it was at the expense of their 

 general vigour. A German writer about the same time 

 insisted that plants from cuttings ought to supersede those 

 from grafts, because the latter, although they grew well for 

 a time, ultimately went wrong through an imperfect union, 

 or some inequality between stock and scion. Then, as 

 now, there was something to be said for this view. It 

 would not be difficult to prove that R. ponticum is not 

 a suitable stock for some of the varieties that are grafted 

 upon it. It is certainly unsuitable for the more tender 

 Himalayan species, seedlings of R. arboreum or R. cam- 

 panulatum being far better. Nurserymen ought, then, to 



