The National Nurseryman. 
FOR GROWERS AND DEALERS IN NURSERY STOCK. 
Copyright, 1899 ( by the National Nurseryman Publishing Co. 
“ Selection is one of the most important factors in plant breeding ."—Herbert J. Webber. 
r 
Vol. VII. 
ROCHESTER. N. Y., SEPTEMBER, 1899. 
No. 8. 
NEW NURSERY METHODS. 
Will They Be Adopted In the Light of Recent Information Re 
gardlng Root-Killing —Professor Hansen’s Advice—The 
Russian Method—Use of Pure Pyrus Baccata as Stock 
— Save Siberian Crab Seed - Severe Tests. 
At the Philadelphia meeting of the American Pomological 
Society Professor N. E. Hansen, Agricultural College, Brook¬ 
ings, South Dakota, will present the following interesting and 
valuable information : 
The past winter has wrought wide-spread destruction in 
the northwestern nurseries and young orchards, and the 
afflicted area extends far to the south. Hundreds of thous¬ 
ands of apple root-grafts have been root-killed, and the tales 
of woe come from very many localities. The winter of 
1872-73 will long be remembered by fruit men for devasta¬ 
tion wrought, the winter of ’84-’85 was another, and now that 
of ’98 and ’99 is added to the list. 
At Brookings we find apple root-grafts root-killed every 
winter unless deeply covered. Several thousand were root- 
killed in the winter of 1896-7. Root-grafts that had made a 
good growth in 1897 were taken up in the fall of 1897 and 
wintered in cellar. Root-grafts made in the winter of 1897-8 
were planted at the same time in the spring of 1898. Both 
lots root-killed. In all hardy varieties we find the scion alive 
and sound, but the American seedling root dead Both Ver¬ 
mont apple and French crab seedlings root-killed. The 
Hibernal and other hardy varieties had not rooted suffi¬ 
ciently from the scion to carry the tree through ; indeed, the 
past winter the scion-roots of all (even Hibernal and Duchess) 
of the cultivated varieties winter-killed. So that “trees, 
rooting from the scion,” will not be hardy enough in winters 
like that of 1898-9. Several hundred seedlings were grown 
in 1896 from seed of wild crabs gathered near Des Moines, 
Iowa, but all but one plant were killed the first winter. 
WILL NURSERY METHODS CHANGE? 
Will the experience of the past winter change nursery 
methods ? Probably very little, except in the northern nur¬ 
series. Commercial methods change slowly, and the test win¬ 
ters do not come often enough to compel a quick changing. 
Certain it is that the western American method of winter root¬ 
grafting makes possible the production of apple-trees at prices 
lower than those of Europe with cheap labor. 
Let us make a flying trip to the largest empire in the world, 
Russia, a country containing one-seventh of the earth’s sur¬ 
face. We will find that the growers in the northern fruit¬ 
growing regions have had the same trouble with root-killing, 
that our tale of woe was theirs also years ago, but that they 
have met and solved the problem and are now masters of the 
situation. 
In 1894, with the kindly assistance and advice of my 
teacher, Professor J. L. Budd, the writer visited the Imperial 
Agricultural College at Moscow, Russia, and in 1897 the visit 
was repeated while on a tour of exploration for Hon. James 
Wilson, to secure new seeds and plants for the United States 
Department of Agriculture in the dry parts of Eastern Russia, 
Central Asia, China and Siberia. Professor R. Schroeder, the 
venerable head of the horticultural department, has been in 
the government service over fifty years. 
THE RUSSIAN METHOD. 
He said that the Russian method of preventing the root¬ 
killing of apple-trees was to use the true Siberian crab, Pyrus 
baccata, as a stock. The seedlings are transplanted into nur¬ 
sery rows and budded at the usual time in August. The trees 
make a good growth in the nursery, bear at least two years 
earlier in orchard, and are dwarfed somewhat in size of tree. 
In the southern parts of Russia, as at Kiev, where even 
French pears are grown, I found the nursery stocks to be 
mostly ordinary apple seedlings from Germany and France, as 
they were cheaper than apple seedlings of Russian origin, 
which were difficult to obtain in commercial quantities. (A 
similar state of affairs obtains in our eastern states where 
crab seedlings imported from France, or grown from im¬ 
ported seed, are at times cheaper than seedlings from seed 
saved at our own cider mills). 
Pyrus baccata is the hardiest known species of the apple 
and is hardly even at the agricultural experiment station at 
Indian Head, about 350 miles west of Winnipeg on the Can¬ 
adian Pacific Railway, where the thermometer goes down to 
52 degrees or more below zero. It is found especially in the 
Transbaikal section of Siberia, east of Lake Baikal, where 
the climate is purely continental. 
THE PROBLEM BEFORE US. 
It now remains to be settled by expeiiment which is the 
best form of the Siberian crab for this purpose. The true 
Pyrus baccata is probably the best, as Pyrus prunifolia appears 
to be a hybrid of P. baccata and P Malus, the cultivated 
apple, according to a recent observation of Professor L. H. 
Bailey (see Bailey’s “Evolution of Our Native Fruits,” page 
272), who examined, while in Berlin a year or so ago, the 
specimen in the Willdenow herbarium on which ti e species is 
founded. Fr. Th. Koeppen (St. Petersburg, 1888), doubts 
the Russian or Siberian origin of P. prunifolia ; of this article 
the writer secured a copy while in Russia. The Transcen¬ 
dent crab is of this type and blights badly. Seed from 
Siberia is not yet commercially obtainable. The old Yellow 
or Red Siberian, with fruit the size of a cherry or less, may 
prove very useful ; also the old Cherry crab ; old trees, forty 
years old or more, are found scattered through the older 
parts of the West. The true P. baccata has deciduous calyx 
segments, that is, the old sepals at the “blossom end ” of the 
apple, fall off towards maturity. A Russian writer recom- 
