CHAPTER XI 



IS GRAFTAGE DEVITALIZING? 



206. Points involved in discussion. — Nowadays we hear 

 little discussion as to whether or not graftage is a de- 

 vitalizing process. Perhaps this is largely because of 

 investigations made at various domestic and foreign ex- 

 periment stations and teachings of agricultural colleges 

 and schools at home and abroad. But even so late as the 

 early nineties, discussion was rife and even such well- 

 known writers as Burbidge of Ireland and Bailey of the 

 United States took opposite sides. Beginning about a 

 decade later Lucien Daniel and other European inves- 

 tigators began to present results of their exhaustive 

 studies which as yet seem to have made little impression 

 in America. As Daniel is copiously quoted in this 

 volume, it is thought advisable to present the picture of 

 conditions as they existed in the early nineties before 

 he began to publish his findings. Therefore the next few 

 paragraphs have been condensed from an address by 

 Bailey before the Peninsula Horticultural Society at 

 Dover, Delaware, in 1892. 



To the popular mind graftage seems mysterious. People look 

 upon it as akin to magic, opposed to nature. Strange, for the 

 operation is simple ! The process of union is nothing more than 

 the healing of a wound. It is not more mysterious than rooting of 

 cuttings. Natural grafts are fairly common among forest trees. 

 Occasionally union is so complete the foster stock entirely sup- 

 ports and nourishes the other. Stem cuttings, however, are rare 

 among wild plants ; in fact, there is in the North but one common 

 instance : certain brittle willows whose twigs drop in moist places 

 and sometimes take root. 



Why is union of cion and stock any more mysterious or unusual 

 than rooting of cuttings? Is it not simpler and more normal? A 

 wounded surface heals over to protect the plant. When two 

 wounded surfaces of consanguineous plants are closely applied, 

 nothing is more natural than that the nascent cells should interlock 

 and unite. But why bits of stem should throw out roots from 



