CHAPTER VII 

 PROPAGATING FRUIT PLANTS 



Fruit varieties, with rare exceptions, do not come true from 

 the seed. Thus the seeds of a Stayman Winesap apple might 

 give rise to red, green, or striped, sweet or sour, large or small 

 apples. Some might resemble the parent variety, but many 

 of them would be worthless, with the chances slight that from 

 thousands of seeds there would come a single sort that was an 

 improvement over the parent. 



For this reason it is necessary to secure new plants of a 

 given variety by transferring vegetative parts of that variety 

 to a stock upon which these parts may grow, or by rooting the 

 vegetative parts without the use of a stock, or by inducing the 

 development of roots on the mother plant which may later be 

 separated and used for new plants. The name given to the 

 process of making the transfer depends upon the nature of the 

 particular method employed and the vegetative parts used. 

 Thus we have cleft grafting^ lohip grafting, shield building, 

 cuttings, layerage, etc. 



It is necessary also at times to resort to one of these proc- 

 esses to convert undesirable varieties to desirable kinds. Per- 

 haps the orchard trees have proved untrue to name. The pur- 

 chaser of Mcintosh or Jonathan may find that he has Ben 

 Davis. He may graft his trees to a more desirable variety. 



Again, it has been found that large blocks of a single variety 

 may prove unproductive, as indicated in the chapter on polli- 

 nation, or this may be true of two mutually incompatible varie- 

 ties. The grower resorts to graftage to develop trees, the 

 blossoms of which will pollenize his orchard and give him a 

 set of fruit. 



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