144 



FLORIDA FRUITS. 



if they are, the fruit production is lessened and deteriorated ; also 

 the trunk, for six feet up, must be relentlessly shorn of all lat- 

 eral branches. 



It has often been said that the BuUace grapes do not need 

 pruning ; and this is quite true, in the sense in which most other 

 grapes need it. This difference is owing to the fact that in the 

 Bullace, or Vitis vulpina family, all the eyes or buds, that in 

 other vines lie dormant, unless forced into activity by pruning, 

 start out of themselves, thus causing a more even, uniform 

 growth over the whole vine ; sometimes, when the vine is very 

 vigorous, the branches overleap and crowd, and in these cases 

 the Bullace vines need pruning, to the extent of setting out the 

 feebler stems that are crowding. We have often heard, and 

 known, of persons " bleeding to death," but it is not often that 

 this happens to a denizen of the vegetable world. 



Until very recently, all nurserymen and growers held that 

 there was no remedy for preventing Bullace grape vines from 

 literally bleeding to death if any considerable limbs were cut or 

 broken during those months when the sap is flowing freely in 

 the spring and summer. Such is the tremendous force of the 

 circulation of the sap, that the wound thus made has no time to 

 heal over, like that of an ordinary plant, but flows out, drop by 

 drop, until the vine dies for want of nutriment. Eecently, how^- 

 ever, one of those happy accidents by which so many discoveries 

 are made, revealed a remedy, certain, and easy of aj^plication. 



A strong, thrifty vine having been burned by its frame 

 catching fire, the owner cut it back to about eighteen inches 

 from the ground. The vine at once began to bleed, and its 

 death must have speedily followed had he not bethought him of 

 charring the cut end ; a lighted torch was applied, but for a day 

 afterwards the sap continued to drip, though slowly ; another 

 charring, the cure was complete, and the ^dne saved. The vine, 

 if it has grown with its usual vigor and thrift, should bear the 

 second year from the layer — that is, the first season on the can- 

 opy ; of course it does not bear very heavily ; it has as yet nei- 

 ther root nor branch enough to make much of a crop, but with 

 each year's growth the yield increases rapidly. 



