1 88 ORANGE CULTURE IN CALIFORNIA. 



vegetable kingdoms. The orange has a powerful and vigorous 

 tap-root, and, I take it, is necessary to its healthy existence in 

 all periods of its long and useful life. The Chinese lemon will 

 not furnish it ; nor will it furnish the healthy and complicated 

 frimbia the orange requires. 



"The Chinese lemon is, as you suggest, of a rapidly maturing 

 nature. The slips grow as rapidly and as readily as those of 

 the willow. I have had them bear bountifully from the slips 

 the same year in which I planted them. They attain a certain 

 hight, and then remain a shrub of an ungainly character. The 

 orange, in trunk and branches, is a beautiful and stately 

 tree, and is a thing of beauty to the eye, to say nothing of its 

 fruit. I have no orange trees for sale " 



J. M. Stewart, of Los Angeles, to Dr. Crandall, February 

 1 8th, 1879: 



"I can say that the opinion here is universal in favor of the 

 orange root on which to bud the orange." 



A. J. Cooper, of Los Angeles, wrote, February I5th : 



"Oranges budded on the lemon, or any stock other than its 

 own, would not sell here for anything. All the old lemon trees 

 here are dead or dying. I could have had any quantity of the 

 Chinese lemon on which to bud, for nothing, but I would not 

 take them." 



The following explains itself: 



"It was discovered some years ago, by some Los Angeles 

 nurserymen, that the Chinese lemon would grow from cuttings ; 

 and that orange trees could be raised on that root for less than 

 one-half the cost of growing them on orange root. Many thou- 

 sands were worked on that root and sold ; but it was finally dis- 

 covered that trees on that root soon became diseased, were short 

 lived, and, worse still, that the fruit on such trees partook to a 

 very great extent of the character of the Chinese lemon. Out 

 of twenty-two nurserymen in Southern California, twenty of the 

 number condemned and abandoned the use of the root. 



"The subject has been thoroughly investigated, both by in- 

 terested and disinterested parties, and so far as we have been 

 able to learn, the universal verdict of all disinterested parties is 

 Decidedly against the Chinese root, 



