140 
FLORIDA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY 
authenticated figures of production or 
breeding, or both—until we insist on the 
same rigid requirements for a plant pedi¬ 
gree we are not apt to make much advance 
toward variety improvement. 
The behavior of some of these progeny 
orchards in California has introduced 
some new ideas and practices into the 
methods of bud selection and propagation. 
It has become apparent that it is not suf¬ 
ficient that the parent tree from which 
budwood is secured should be a good pro¬ 
ducer. It must also be in a state of equi¬ 
librium, so to speak. That is, not given 
to producing occasional fruits of an un¬ 
desirable type. The final proof of this 
stability in the parent is the behavior of 
the progeny and a truly stabilized or ped¬ 
igreed strain cannot be said to have be¬ 
come established until a progeny from a 
single selected tree has come into bearing 
and the fruit has proven uniformly good 
and true to type. Progeny groves of this 
sort then become a most valuable source 
of budwood, but any sporting tendency 
appearing in a progeny-planting, from a 
single parent, renders all the trees in that 
progeny undesirable for further use in 
propagation. To illustrate: Some years 
ago Mr. Shamel started a small progeny 
orchard from a selected lemon tree in Cal¬ 
ifornia to test out what could be expected 
from certain types of budwood. The se¬ 
lected parent tree was a good producer, 
but had one small branch which produced 
elongated ridged fruits—quite worthless 
from a commercial viewpoint. Ten trees 
were top-worked, using budwood from 
this sporting branch, and one hundred 
similar trees were top-worked at the same 
time, using budwood from the portion of 
the tree producing fruit true to type. 
Last year these top-worked trees came into 
fruiting. As was to have been expected, 
the ten trees from the sporting branch 
produced fruit of much the same charac¬ 
ter as the parent branch, generally unde¬ 
sirable. The one hundred trees from nor¬ 
mal budwood also produced on a consider¬ 
able number of branches fruits in varying 
degrees resembling the ridged elongated 
fruit on the sporting branch of the parent 
tree. In other words, the tendency to 
variability was “in the blood,” and it was 
not sufficient in choosing budwood to 
avoid the branch showing the off-type 
fruit. The whole tree in such cases must 
be discarded as a source of propagating 
material. This demonstration, together 
with similar cases coming under observa¬ 
tion, has led to the idea of establishing 
progeny groves where parentage lines can 
be tested out before they are accepted for 
wide use in propagation. 
The keeping of tree performance rec¬ 
ords is going to prove just as important 
in the progeny groves as in the original 
groves from which the parent trees are 
selected. Naturally, all possible care 
should be taken in selecting parent trees 
free from pronounced variability, a point 
that has been given special attention in 
recent selections. When it comes to cut¬ 
ting budwood in commercial quantities, 
however, it is not always feasible or eco¬ 
nomical to give the minute inspection nec¬ 
essary to each parent tree, and it is here 
that the progeny grove of proven uni¬ 
formity of type promises to greatly sim¬ 
plify the whole problem of bud selection. 
