II. THE ARTIFICIAL WAY From Nature man learned the three ways of propagating plants: by seeds, by sprouts and by cuttings; and he invented grafting, for which there is little suggestion in Nature. In all these he improved upon Nature, for he threw his energies into one single, enterprise, sacrificing everything to its success. Look at the wild fruit trees in the woods; then look at the orchards, their lineal descendants. Look at the wild grasses scattered over the earth; the fields of grain have come from them. Look at the scattered cedars in an old pasture; then consider the serried ranks of them in the forests of Germany, standing close like rye in a field, waiting for the harvest that converts their wood into cedar pencils. The forester replants the ground, cultivates, weeds, thins and prunes the young trees for another harvest a century hence.
The growing of young trees from seed makes a large nursery business in all civilised countries. The seed is selected to discard the inferior qualities. The growing is in rows that are cultivated. Again the poorest are discarded, and only the thrifty seedlings transplanted. When set in their permanent places they are tended and defended against anything that encroaches upon their rights. So they thrive, and yield vastly better returns than their wild relatives, whose life is a long fight for mere existence.
A fallen willow twig strikes root. Why not strip the tree to its trunk and. plant every bit? It is done. The old stump covers itself again with a thicket of suckers, and every twig it lost is a hale yearling tree on its own roots. This is the way to get willows and poplars in the nursery rows. It is quicker and surer and easier than planting the seed.
Any tree that sends up suckers from the root will yield young trees as fast as you can dig them up. Loss stimulates the parent tree to greater feats of production.
The highest form of tree multiplication is grafting, and its kindred practice, budding. It is among the oldest arts, dis coursed upon by writers since the dawn of literature. It consists in setting a part of one plant upon another in order that the two may become united by growth into one living structure. The rooted plant is the stock; the added part, a piece of a twig with one or more buds, is called the cion.
Grafting is the act of making this union. The graft is the union, or joint, thus formed. Budding is essentially the same process. The difference is that instead of a cion a single bud is joined to the stock, only enough of the twig being used to give the bud a foundation.
The object of grafting and budding is to produce a tree whose character shall be twofold. The top that grows above the graft or bud shall have the better fruit or other character istics of the tree from which the cion or bud came. The stock
retains its own character, for example, straight growth, deep root system or resistance to diseases. The stock is the nurse tree, feeding the top, which flowers and fruits after its own kind. Its leaves and mode of branching are characteristic of the new, ingrafted variety, else the process would be useless.
Cultivated trees rarely "come true" from seed. They "revert" to the original wild species from which varieties have so recently sprung. For seedlings change their natures very gradually, and the forming of varieties in plants is a modern innovation, compared with the unnumbered centuries during which seed bearing has gone on in the wilds.
Grafting and budding serve four purposes: I. The per petuation of a desired variety. 2. The multiplying of its num bers. 3. The production of dwarfs. 4. The production of hardy varieties.
A nurseryman's business is•largely the accomplishment of these ends, and the supplying of planters with the results of his labours. Flowers and fruits and ornamental plants ate his products. Let us consider an illustration of each: t. The bellflower apple is a choice variety. Mixed seeds from a cider mill are planted in the nursery rows. They come up as little whips, and are budded with buds from bellflower trees. What ever their lineage, these trees will be bellflowers when they come into bearing, for the whole treetop came out of that one bellflower bud. 2. The number of young trees of bellflower a nurseryman can supply depends on the number of seedlings he buds success fully. An old tree spares hundreds of buds, so the multiplication is wonderfully rapid. 3. It is possible to dwarf a variety by budding or grafting it upon a slow-growing stock. Thus, the stunted quince is used as a stock for varieties of pears, and dwarfs result. The law of its growth enables the stock to curb the ambitions of the top. 4. Tender-rooted varieties that are winter killed in cold climates are often made hardy by grafting them upon stocks of native kinds. For instance, the wild plum and the sand cherry of Dakota and Nebraska are successfully grafted with varieties of peaches, apricots and Japanese plums, which have failed repeatedly in this dry, cold region "on their own roots." Native crabs have proved good stocks for imported varieties of apples. Nursery stock is oftener budded than grafted, the trees being but yearling whips, as a rule. Stone fruits are generally budded. Apple trees are commonly budded in the East, but root grafting is the rule in Western nurseries. Older trees are grafted, to save time and labour.