144 Our Field and Forest Trees 



In many orchards, when spring returns, we may 

 see apple trees bearing some boughs white with 

 blossoms, while other boughs, nourished by the 

 same root, can show only very small buds — or 

 perhaps stalks from which the blossoms have all 

 fallen away. An earlier and a later blooming 

 apple have been grafted together (Fig. 35) ; a 

 living shoot has been fastened to a living tree in 

 such a way that the two unite and become one 

 plant body. 



If grafting is to be a success, the cambium layer 

 of the tree, and of the graft, must be close to- 

 gether in spring when new wood and new bark are 

 in the making. 



While the gardener Is busy with his buds and 

 his slips, the wind is doing some grafting too. 

 Here and there in the woods two branches chafe 

 together in the spring gales till all their bark is 

 rubbed away, and their cambium layers come into 

 contact. Then if growth is active, and the wind 

 does not undo its own work by keeping the boughs 

 in motion, new wood forms between the chafed 

 surfaces, fastening them together (Fig. 36). 



So we may see a union formed between two 

 branches of one tree or two branches of the same 

 species; but a wind graft never joins two trees of 

 different kinds. 



The gardener can graft together trees of dif- 

 ferent kinds, and thus he can outdo the wind. But 

 he grafts on only a small slip, or perhaps but a 



