BROOKLYN BOTANIC GARDEN 
LEAFLETS 
THE BROOKLYN INSTITUTE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES 
Series II Brooklyn, N. Y., October 28, 1914 Nos. 13 and 14 
GRAFTS, GRAFTING AND GRAFT-HYBRIDS 
“ By the faith of men. 
We have some old crab-trees here at home that will not 
Be grafted to your relish.”— Shakespear. 
Grafting, as everyone knows, is a word of many meanings and 
many associations. As applied to plants, the process of grafting 
increases the value of certain kinds of fruit and ornamental 
plants from that of a few dollars to many thousands of dollars. 
For example, the thousands of dollars’ worth of Baldwin apples 
that are brought to our markets each year are the output from 
orchards made possible through grafting. For, prior to 1793, the 
Baldwin apple existed in Massachusetts as a single tree, whose 
fruit was probably known only to the youngsters of a very 
restricted countryside. To-day, thousands of trees of this variety 
are growing all over the northern United States, and every little 
hamlet grocery receives its quota of Baldwin apples. Far more 
interesting, however, than the fact of nation-wide appreciation of 
the Baldwin is the method by which the fruiting area of this 
variety has been increased, for all the thousands of barrels are in 
reality the fruit of that original Massachusetts tree, and the so- 
called Baldwin trees of the thousand and one orchards scattered 
over the country are grafts or twigs from this original tree, 
so manipulated that they are growing on the roots of other varie- 
ties of apple— varieties so numerous and so unimportant, com- 
mercially speaking, that no name is ever given to them. In 
reality, then, every so-called Baldwin tree, except the original 
