The Florida agriculturist. [volume] (DeLand, Fla.) 1878-1911, 1884-05-28
CHAPTER l.

CHAPTER l.
THEORY OF VEGETABLE REPRODUCTION.
ART. III.-IQfuence of the graft Npon
vegetables.
1t must certainly be acknowledged
that the graft as we'll as the culture and
soil may inhuence the development OF
vegetable organs. A grated tree is an
individual forced to live upon a stock
not it's own, but from which it must
draw its .nourishment, so that only the
subject of the graft can be assiinilated
to the soil. If its organs are adapted to
furnish the graft all the aliment OF which
it can make use, then the graft Will take
on an extraordinary growth, which it
would mot have equalled on less thrifty
stock. If the stock which bears it be
unable by its organization to supply the
food it needs, then will it remain nleagre
and spindling.
These different circumstances, as well
as the culture, may produce the .phe-
nomena presented by the wild service
tree (Sorbus Aucuparia), which, grated
uponthe Hawthorne, (Wesp1 las OHocdn-
tha) grows with more than usual rapidi-
ty and attains more than its wonted
height and fruitfulness. Also that of
the Wild apple, which, grated upon the
paradise apple, becomes slender shrub
whose branches grow hardly ten feet
high.
These phenomena are due only to the
abundance or lack of nourishment, and
present no other effect than greater or
less development of the different parts
of the plant. We remark one thing still
more-striking in ordinary gratis. Every
grated plant appears to display, at least
for time, Insurance of foliage more
marked than the seeding, for instance,
If the graft has been put into an individ-
ual of this nature; but this is due to
very simple cause. The seeding dss.
generally once in twoor three years, and
when it does bear, the tree is so loaded
down that it can only nourish them all
with difficulty. From the time it is
grated several changes are effected. Its
plump and bushy top disappears and is
replaced by a single branch, which has
for it's own nourishment all the sap
which supported that large quantity of
foliage. To be sure the graft may en-
large afterwards, but it never replaces
the quantity of branches which crowned
the original tree. A grated tree is al
WAYS less large and bushy, and hence
the foliage is better nourished and more
beautiful, and its fruits which are less
abundant, are of greater size and more
agreeable flavor. rs.e ~. .VEre-s-. =
Another circumstance also influences,
perhaps, the elaboration OF fruit In the
grated tree.
The graft unites branch of one yarie-
ty to stock of another variety. This
union. which is not natural, forms al
ways kind of knot at the point OF in
sertion, which may check the rapidity OF
the flow of sap; and we know that on
account of this slowness in the current
of the sap, buds fed by it produce fruit
rather than branches.
A tree that bears but little may be
rendered fruitful by rubbing off the bark
at it's foot. The cultivators of vineyards
bend the vines or break them little
at the place where they wish the fructi-
fication to commence; and | have sew
eral times obtained oranges OF eXtraor-
dinary size by twisting the branch which
bore them.
All these means have been long known
to cultivators, and it is no longer doubt
full that this effect is due only to thegreat
slowness IN the flow of the sap, which
thus influence the quantity and quality
of the fruit.
But such are the limits which nature
has fixed to the influence of the graft
upon EFgGCdD16S. 1U 1dClIlIdIcS VI Ilit-
proves their development, but never
changes or modifiies their forms, juices,
or colors. Newer has the wild pear been
transformed by the graft into the butter
pear, nor the butter pear into the muscat
pear; never has the bitter orange been
so improved as to lose its bitterness by
grating. have "a stock of this species
which have grated three tunes upon
itself, graft upon graft, but it gives me
only larger fruit, differing in no way from
that of the plant which furnished the
bud.
The graft is nothing more than kind
of slip. 1t transfers the bud of one plant
to the stem or body of another; and this
bud, which encloses within itself the
rudiments of the vegetables destined to
grow from it, draws from the stock on
which it is placed the juices necessary
for it nourishment in the same manner
as the slip draws them directly from the
earth 1t is possible that, from the pas
sage which these juices are forced to
make Though the roots and trunk Of TIE