PROPAGATION OF VARIETIES. 



27 



guished, as soon as well formed, by their roundness, and in some trees 

 by their growing in pairs ; while wood-buds grow singly, and are more 

 or less pointed. We have seen a curious fruit-grower borrow in this 

 way, in September, from a neighbor ten miles distant, a single blos- 

 som-bud of a rare new pear, and produce from it a fair and beautiful 

 fruit the next summer. The bud, in such cases, should be inserted 

 on a favorable limb of a bearing tree. 



Annular budding, Pig. 17, we have found a valuable 

 mode for trees with hard wood and thick bark, or those 

 which, like the walnut, have buds so large as to render 

 it difficult to bud them in the common way. A ring of 

 bark, when the sap is flowing freely, is taken from the /ggjjnfe 

 stock, a, and a ring of corresponding size containing a ffpt 

 bud, b, from the scion. If the latter ' should be too 

 large a piece must be taken from it to make it fit ; ^ 

 or should all the scions be too small, the ring upon the 

 stock may extend only three-fourths the way round, to 



Suit the ring of the bud. Annular Budding. 



An application of this mode, of great value, occa- 

 sionally occurs in this country. In snowy winters, fruit-trees in orchards 

 are sometimes girdled at the ground by field-mice, and a growth of 

 twenty years is thus destroyed in a single day, should the girdle extend 

 quite round the tree. To save such a tree it is only necessary, as 

 soon as the sap rises vigorously in the spring, to apply a new ring 

 of bark, in the annular mode, taken from a branch of proper size ; 

 tying it firmly, and drawing up the earth so as to cover the wound com- 

 pletely. When the tree is too large to apply an entire ring, separate 

 pieces, carefully fitted, will answer ; it is well to reduce the top some- 

 what by pruning, that it may not make too large a demand on the root 

 for a supply of food. 



Another practice, and perhaps one more easily applicable, is the tak- 

 ing several large grafts or strong twigs of last year's growth, and after 

 splitting them in halves, pare each end down to a thin edge, and in- 

 sert them underneath the bark of the tree just above and below the 

 wound. Tie around firmly with strong bass matting, and then draw up 

 the earth to cover the whole and keep out the air. 



Budding may be done in the spring as well as at the latter end of 

 summer, and is frequently so performed upon roses and other orna- 

 mental shrubs by French gardeners, but is only in occasional use upon 

 fruit-trees. 



Influence of the stock and graft. 



The well-known fact that we may have a hundred different varieties 

 of pear on the same tree, each of which produces its fruit of the proper 

 form, color, and quality ; and that we may have, at least for a time, 

 several distinct though nearly related species upon one stock, as the Peach, 

 Apricot, Nectarine, and Plum, prove very conclusively the power of 

 every grafted or budded branch, however small, in preserving its identity. 

 To explain this, it is only necessary to recall to mind that the ascending 

 sap, which is furnished by the root or stock, is nearly a simple fluid ; 

 that the leaves digest and modify this sap, forming a proper juice, which 

 re-descends in the inner bark ; and that thus every bud and leaf upon a 



