The Garden Magazine, April, 1922 



125 



it isn't all quite so simple a proposition as this lucid explanation 

 would make it appear. Because of his long experience, study, 

 and his natural genius for the work, grafting operations on any 

 sort of stock have become for Doctor Morris as commonplace 

 affairs as a minor operation or an excursion into some indi- 

 vidual's abdominal cavity. He instinctively handles his knife 

 and accessories with consummate skill. But because we are not 

 all surgeons is no reason why we cannot follow the directions 

 given in detail in Doctor Morris's recently published volume 

 "Nut Growing" (Macmillan Co.) and here summarized. 



IT IS insisted that in plant as in animal surgery there must 

 be perfect asepsis — the prevention of infection by bacteria, 

 •dirt, etc. Therefore the cut surfaces of stock and cion must 

 be touched as little as possible, the wounds must be kept as 

 small as consistent with the scale of the operation, and all ex- 

 posed surfaces after the work is completed must be protected 

 from outside contamination. During the actual grafting pro- 

 cess this means simply deftness and care and clean implements; 

 afterwards it is effected by covering the graft with, not grafting 

 wax, paint or any more noisome compound, but simply melted 

 paraffin. This is the adaptation of a practice that proved a 

 godsend in the treatment of burns during the World War. Not 

 only is paraffin cleanly, easy and pleasant to apply and conven- 

 iently handled either cold or (with a brush) when melted, but 

 it is waterproof, durable, inexpensive and adapted to filling up 

 every possible crack and crevice into which wax or paint would 

 not reach or in which it might not remain. Thus paraffin not 

 only covers and actually helps to heal cut surfaces, but also it 

 fills up little pockets in which sap might collect and, fermenting, 

 develop injurious poisons. Carrying this disinfecting idea a 

 bit further, Doctor Morris found that if, in an especially vigorous 

 graft, sap tends to ooze out from beneath the paraffin, a small 

 pad of absorbent cotten dusted full of borax and tied over the 

 point of leakage provides an effective protection against other- 

 wise almost certain infection. 



Secondly, there must be prevention of evaporation that would 

 dry the cion before the union is sufficiently formed to provide an 

 additional supply from the stock. Here again paraffin does 

 the trick — to the extent that in Doctor Morris's work no graft is 

 completed until not only the 

 cut surfaces of stock and cion, 

 the whole union and the raffia 

 or other wrapping are covered, 

 but also the entire cion from 

 graft to tip. This coating 

 checks evaporation and, being 

 translucent, permits the vital 

 action of light on the chloro- 

 phyll in the bark to continue 

 unhindered. At the same time 

 it somewhat modifies the heat 

 rays. Furthermore, although 

 it excludes bacteria and checks 

 evaporation, it does not suffo- 

 cate the parties to the graft- 

 ing arrangement by interfering 

 with their transpiration. In 

 other words it does everything 

 that a protective covering 

 should do, and nothing that 

 it should not. 



The third essential is the 

 avoidance of injury of any 

 sort to the cells of the cion 

 between the time it is cut 

 and the paraffining of the fin- 

 ished graft. The delicate 

 cambium tissue must be pro- 

 tected from bruising and from 

 the drying effect of sunlight 



DR. MORRIS AT HIS WIZARDRY 



As skilful with plants as with humans, Dr. Robert T. Morris 



is here shown working over an evergreen Alder-leaved 



Chestnut brought by him last year from Georgia 



and wind — and also from the infection that is almost inevitable 

 if the cions are merely wrapped in moist paper, cloth or moss. 

 This is especially true of cions cut from growing wood for im- 

 mediate grafting — as in the case of the Pear already mentioned 

 — for which reason this type of grafting has been almost un- 

 known in practical horticulture. 



To solve this problem Doctor Morris uses saline solution — 

 identical in purpose and effect to that in which, in surgery, 

 fragments of living animal tissue are kept alive and in condition 

 for grafting for hours and even days. By placing the cions in 

 this solution as soon as they are cut it is possible to hold them 

 over in perfect condition for several days, to shape them ex- 

 actly and carefully in the evening in the study — instead of out 

 in the field — and to keep them in readiness for the actual grafting 

 operation whenever the worker finds it convenient. This saline 

 solution treatment together with the final paraffining is, without 

 doubt, responsible for Doctor Morris' success with summer, 

 growing-wood grafts and with cions a foot or more in length. 

 The solution now in use as devised for Doctor Morris by Pro- 

 fessor Knudson of Cornell so as to be in correct relationship (or 

 as physiologists say, isotonic) to the cell sap, is made up of 



Water i liter 



Calcium chlorid (Ca CI) 2.25 gram 



Sodium chlorid (Na CI) 1.25 gram 



Potassium chlorid (KCL) 1.50 gram 



More orthodox precautions that contribute to the success of 

 grafting operations and which Doctor Morris commends to 

 others desiring to employ his methods, include: the choice of 

 closely related species or varieties; the bringing of the cambium 

 layers of stock and cion into accurate contact; the maintenance 

 of this close contact during the period of union; the bracing of 

 the cion as soon as it begins to grow to prevent its being torn 

 out by the wind; and the careful control of growth from the stock 

 while unions is taking place and after the cion has begun to grow. 

 In this latter connection it is advised that no natural shoot be 

 allowed to start from the stock until the cion has "caught" and 

 is growing vigorously; that after the cion shoot is several inches 

 long a few shoots be allowed to grow (the first year) from the 

 stock in a top-worked tree; but that no such shoots be permitted 



to grow after the first year in 

 a grafted sapling, or the third 

 year in a top-worked tree. 

 Heretofore good-sized trees be- 

 ing worked over were com- 

 pletely dehorned; but, finding 

 that cions on such stocks tend 

 to make excessive growth that 

 is especially susceptible to in- 

 jury, Doctor Morris is now in- 

 clined to leave at least one 

 leader on such a tree for a 

 year or two, inserting all grafts 

 below it. 



In the matter of maintaining 

 a close joint between cion and 

 stock in the case of the " bark- 

 slot " method devised for work- 

 ing on large limbs or trunks 

 (and which is practically an im- 

 proved form of what is known 

 in Europe as "crown grafting") 

 Doctor Morris has again appro- 

 priated a surgical device in the 

 form of a "Spanish windlass" 

 such as is used to check hemor- 

 rhages. This he describes as: 



"a strong tarred or paraffined cord 

 with ends tied in a firm knot but 

 hanging loosely about the graft. A 

 wooden skewer or any small twister 



