PEACH BUDS AND THEIR UNTIMELY "TAKING-OFF. 



EFORE the winter just closed was 

 more than half through, it be- 

 came evident that the season 

 was to be a most exceptional 

 one, and the peach as a sensi- 

 tive fruit tree was selected as 

 a subject for microscopic exam- 

 ination of the flower buds. On 

 the third of January, twigs of the peach were ob- 

 tained from a number of New Jersey growers. At 

 that time, while there was some swelling manifest, 

 no injury could be observed. From that date until 

 the time of writing (March 19) fresh buds were in- 

 spected almost every week, especially following any 

 cool spell, there being nothing that could be called 

 real cold weather until near the middle of March. 

 During the past week a large number of buds have 

 been examined, some lots of which had no living 

 buds, while others showed the rate of mortality not 

 lower than seventy-four per cent. 



The facts, well known to every peach-grower, are 

 quickly stated. The winter was a warm, moist one, and 

 the peach, being one of those trees easily stimulated 

 into activity, began to push its flowers, and by the mid- 

 dle of January many blossoms had appeared. All such 

 flowers it was natural to expect 

 would prove fruitless, and the 

 peach-growers' hopes were cen- 

 tered in those flower buds that did 

 not more than swell, some of them 

 only slightly. Up to the loth of 

 March the peach crop for New 

 Jersey, for example, was not spe- 

 cially impaired. At that time, while 

 some of the more forward trees 

 in the warmly exposed situations, 

 as hillsides sloping to the south, 

 were not in the best condition, the 

 owners of the orchards counted 

 upon a fair crop, provided the 

 weather would not change to that 

 of an ordinary winter. At a, in 

 Fig. I, is seen a portion of a twig 

 showing the condition of the buds 

 at the coming of the "March 

 freeze," which, in passing, it may 

 be said, was far above zero for all 

 parts of New Jersey. The figure was drawn from an 

 average twig, and it represents three of the flower buds 

 with their scales loosened one from the other. To the 



feeling such buds are soft, and in some cases, by looking 

 down upon them, the rose color of the infolded petals is 

 apparent, and occasionally a stamen shows its yellow 

 anther. In order to bring out the swollen condition 

 more strikingly, a portion of another twig, is placed 

 by the side of (?, on which the buds are of their normal 

 size for the time of year at which I am writing. 



The real condition of things within the bud scales is 

 show to some advantage in Fig. 2. 

 i\ At a, the bud is represented as in a 



Fig 



Peach Buds. 



Fig. 2. Peach Buds in a Normal (a) Winter Condi- 

 tion AND Half-opened (b). 



normal midwinter condition, while at l> we have a thin 

 longitudinal section through the half-opened bud. In 

 the center of all sits the pistil or miniature peach, which 

 is of the shape of an Indian club, the large basal por- 

 tion finally maturing into the luscious fruit. There is 

 no great change in the pistil between the two buds, the 

 one in /' being larger and better filled out. In a, the 

 stamens are small and the anthers often suspended, the 

 cup bearing them coming quite close up to the pistil. 

 In the anthers are larger and upright, while the cup 

 is expanded at the top into an inverted bell. The scales, 

 also, instead of folding over the pistil are extended lat- 

 erally, and have grown to double their former size. 



Such are some of the more prominent structural dif- 

 ferences between the closed and the open peach bud in 

 winter. The fact that one bud is open and the other 

 closed is not enough to account for the differences of 

 behavior of the two towards a low temperature. It is 

 natural to infer that the cold can get into one and not 

 the other, and therefore the freedom of access is suffi- 

 cient reason for frost killing. We need to look back of 

 this visible diflerence to the condition of the vital por- 

 tions of the bud. It is a well known fact that any living 



