44 
FLORIDA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
phase of probable variety variation that 
cannot occur in deciduous fruits. 
The graft of deciduous fruit trees must 
be taken and put in when dormant, though 
buds of the peach for instance like the 
orange are put in during the growing sea¬ 
son. Before blooming in the spring or 
late in the fall when the summer growth 
is used, for budding oranges, I think we 
may expect the new trees to be true to the 
parent, but budwood taken just after 
blooming in the spring is liable to show 
variations if taken from twigs on which 
the bloom has been cross pollenated from 
other varieties. Rev. Lyman Phelps work¬ 
ed on this line before the ’95 freeze with 
artificial pollenation and produced several 
modified oranges of which all were lost so 
far as I know except Tephi, a Jaffa im¬ 
proved with Malta Blood. The first ex¬ 
ample of this kind I discovered was 
Botelha navel, a bud sport from May bud¬ 
ding about 1885, a round, nearly seedless, 
midseason navel that overbore so persist¬ 
ently as to be undesirable. It was lost in 
1895. I think most orange growers have 
noticed variations in standard varieties 
and I think if these could be traced they 
would be found to result from effects of 
cross pollenation on bud wood used just 
after blooming. 
All will concede that the foreign pollen 
cells are the only cause of hybrids and 
crosses in the seeds of fruits. The jx)llen 
cells are the only motile cells in the higher 
orders of plants. A single grain attached 
to the pistil of an orange flower for in¬ 
stance sends its cells down that pistil into 
the ovary or embryo fruit and the mature 
seeds of that fruit make trees with fruits 
differing from the parent tree. 
Mr. Phelps contended that the influence 
of these motile pollen cells not only af¬ 
fected the embryo fruit and seeds, but for 
a short time, at least, affected a leaf axil 
bud or two adjacent to the flower. 
For any person who has the time and 
patience the method of taking a bud next 
an artificially pollenated bloom' offers a 
short cut to variety improvement. I am 
also of opinion that the split-bud and cross 
pollenation bud methods offer quicker and 
surer means of obtaining thin skinned, fine 
grained, seedless or nearly seedless fruits 
of high quality, by combining varieties 
that are already high bred or superior, 
than the growing of crosses from seed. 
In conclusion I would call attention to a 
difficulty in producing high grade, early, 
hardy oranges. The hardy trait must be 
derived from the Citrus Trifoliata while 
the sweetness of juice and tissue with fine 
flavor must be derived from fruits that 
have derived these qualities from the ten¬ 
der citron. In my experience the Tan- 
gerona and Early Oblong, for instance, 
are not so resistant to cold as the Satsuma 
and Mandarin which clearly show traces 
of Trifoliata ancestry. The Citrus prob¬ 
ably more than any other fruits have the 
predisposition to throw to excess in cross¬ 
ing, some one characteristic of form, 
structure, color or flavor, with the odds 
enormously in favor of monstrosities, and 
a happy combination of desirable qualities 
will be as much a matter of chance as of 
scientific management. 
