NOW, ANY ONE CAN GRAFT 

 AT ANY TIME 



E. L. D. SEYMOUR 



Modern Surgery Principles Successfully Applied to Plant Propagation Practices Ensuring 

 High Percentage of "Takes" — Simple Way to Keep Cion Alive — Good-bye to Grafting Wax 



Editors' Note: The arresting importance of Doctor Morris's common sense improvements in such an 

 every-day occurrence as grafting makes us realize that after all the world does move. Of all the routine opera- 

 tions of the garden that of grafting has been enshrouded in mystery and muck, for only a few years ago all 

 sorts of vile compounds of clay and what-not to case the wound were considered essentials in the ritual. Now 

 comes the ray of clear light in the application of plain ordinary cleanliness and a modern sanitation sense. 



IHOUGH grafting is one of the oldest of the arts of plant- 

 craft, yet the last three or four years has seen greater 

 progress in it than in all the centuries before! 



No longer need we cut our cion sticks in the fall and 

 store them away in cellars or coldframes; no longer need we 

 struggle with mallet, chisel, and grafting wax during the piercing 

 winds of February and March lest the sap "start to run" be- 

 fore the work is finished; no longer need we anticipate fifty or 

 more per cent, of failures due to the drying or rotting, choking 

 through not cutting the binding in time, etc. Nor is the kind 

 of plant even of such importance, it would seem — nothing being 

 impossible so long as a fairly close family relationship exists. 



And all this because Dr. Robert T. Morris, an eminent surgeon 

 by profession and an ardent horticulturist by avocation, has 

 successfully applied to the ancient art of grafting some of the 

 principles and methods of modern surgery! Doctor Morris 

 does his gardening at Merribrooke, a natural and beautiful coun- 

 try place of several hundred acres in the wooded highlands out- 

 side Stamford, Conn. There I found him one glorious Novem- 

 ber day indulging in some experimental grafting on a mass of 

 tangled wild Grape vines. 



On every hand there is something of interest — a native Tulip 

 tree grafted over to the clean-limbed Magnolia glauca; the same 

 species on the plebeian Pumpwood; a Shagbark or Pignut sap- 

 ling bearing perhaps half a dozen grafts, each of a different 

 variety or hybrid form of Hickory to be tested for the quality 

 of its nuts (for, as is more or less generally known, Doctor Morris is 

 one of the most enthusiastic advocates of nut culture in the United 

 States and one of the best informed authorities) ; and a native 

 Persimmon (productive at least as far north as Newark, N. J.) 

 grafted over to one or more of the luscious Japanese sorts which 

 Doctor Morris yet hopes to make a practicable fruit crop for 

 a large part of the temperate zone. Hazels are everywhere — 

 some native seedlings bearing healthy shoots of European or 

 Asiatic species, and other seedlings of foreign origin grafted to 

 American sorts, especially the Bonnybush variety, discovered by 

 the Doctor in one of his pastures bearing nuts of unusual size 

 and quality on particularly sturdy, handsome growth. 



Scattered in among these combination specimens are individual 

 trees that the casualist would overlook, but full of interest — a 

 Chinese Pistache of no great value outside of its hardiness, but 

 waiting to be top-worked to some of the commercial nut bearing 

 forms; a slender, handsome specimen of the Carolina Hickory, a 

 stranger in these New England environs; the Asiatic Winged 

 Walnut brought up from a collection on Long Island and now 

 of four years' standing in this, its "farthest north" location; an 

 Armenian Apricot also known as Chinese Almond, that blossoms 

 regularly even ahead of the Forsythia, but just as regularly is 

 nipped by succeeding frosts so that it has never yet born fruit; 

 and Chestnut, Walnut, Hazel, Hickory and even Pecan hybrids 

 innumerable, each of them offering possibilities. Among so 

 many riches some jewels are likely to be overlooked even by the 

 owner, as was the native Chestnut he had grafted over to the 

 improved variety Scott more than a dozen years ago, and only 



rediscovered last summer, covered with burrs. "The things I 

 forget about," remarked Doctor Morris resignedly, "lead people 

 to think sometimes that I'm untruthful." 



Grafting nut trees has long been regarded as most difficult 

 and indeed of late years has been almost discarded in favor of 

 budding. Whereas heretofore a two per cent, success was re- 

 markably gratifying, Doctor Morris is now from seventy to 

 eighty per cent, consistently successful with Hickory, Pecan, 

 Walnut and .Chestnut ! He has even established Chestnut cions 

 on several kinds of Oak ! 



Last spring, strong unions were secured between improved 

 Plum and Cherry cions on common Wild Cherry stocks. Cions 

 ranging all the way from an inch to over two feet in length were 

 used. Even with the shorter lengths the grafts often make 

 from three to six feet of new wood the first season. Grafting 

 has been successful in February with wood cut immediately 

 before use, and as late as the first week of September, as well as 

 at all times between, but Doctor Morris suggests from April 

 to July as the preferred time in which to do budding. He as- 

 serts, however, that grafting can in his opinion, be done at any 

 time throughout the year! 



Cutting and storing of cions in advance of the operation as 

 is now generally done — "mediate grafting" as Doctor Morris 

 terms it — will in all likelihood remain the common method; 

 but a big and attractive field for "immediate grafting" is seen, 

 the cion being cut and at once inserted in the stock. By this 

 method, using as a cion a piece of growing Pear wood in full leaf, 

 a Kieffer Pear was successfully grafted in the middle of August, 

 1 9 1 9 ! A branch was accidentally broken from a dwarf Pear and 

 after it had lain around on the earth for a couple of days a friend 

 facetiously remarked that it might provide some good grafting 

 material. Largely in a spirit of fun, Doctor Morris cut some 

 cions from the wilted branch, stripped off the leaves, set the cions 

 in a near-by seedling Pear stock — and they soon were growing 

 vigorously ! 



Another interesting case is that of a young European Hazel 

 tree some six inches in diameter which, two years ago, was com- 

 pletely girdled by field mice and presumably killed, at any rate 

 it was cut down flush with the ground and forgotten — until this 

 past spring, two years later, mind you, during which time no 

 suckers or shoots had appeared. In May, 1921, for some un- 

 explained reason, Doctor Morris decided to see what would 

 happen to a graft made on the supposedly dead stump, so he in- 

 serted a couple of cions from his Bonnybush Hazel. When seen 

 on November 6th, they had not only taken hold but had made a 

 growth of at least three feet apiece; moreover, the bark of the 

 stump all around the graft had become green and healthy and 

 had started to grow up over the six-inch cut surface! 



WHAT is the secret? Protoplasm, argues Doctor Morris, 

 is protoplasm whether in plant or animal. In either case 

 it lives, multiplies, thrives and perishes under similar conditions. 

 Why, then, should not the methods and precautions applicable 

 in the one field prove equally useful in the other? Of course, 



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