i6o 



NATURE STUDY AND LIFE 



to the plants. The best of memories are apt to play all 

 sorts of pranks, and this is only a safe and easy precau- 

 tion. Label the flower, so that there can be no possibility 

 of mistake. When the seeds are ripe, plant them care- 

 fully in soil that has been thoroughly baked, or that you 

 are sure does not contain a single seed of the kind you 

 are to plant in it. With such seeds the chances are 

 greater that you may rear a flower 

 or fruit that combines the qualities 

 of both parents and is possibly the 

 finest of its kind in 

 the world. 



, Run- 

 ners, Cuttings, 

 Grafts, and Buds. — I have 

 ' just stopped writing to go 



down into the garden to count the 

 buds on this year's shoot of my 

 little Esopus tree. There are 57, 

 and this whole shoot was a single 

 bud last spring. On a similar shoot 

 of Burbank plum there were 173, on 

 a Royal George peach, 240, on a 



', 2, 3, 4, 5, yearly growth -,.-,. a i i 



rings; i, terminal buds; Niagara grape, QI. A bud, CXCCpt 



a fruit bud, is in possibility a tree 

 of its kind. The buds on a tree 

 produce shoots or trees that vary 

 little if at all from one another ; so, 



in order to multiply a desirable variety, we have only to 



place its buds where they may grow. 



Fig. 6r. Cherry Twigs 

 A growth shoot and fruit spurs. 



/, /, lateral or leaf buds. A 

 pointed leaf bud may be 

 seen in the center of each 

 cluster of fruit buds 



