The Apple-Tree Part 6

The reader will now ask me about the water-core apples, so much sought and prized by youngsters. The water-core is not characteristic of a variety, although occurring in some varieties more frequently than in others. It is a physiological condition, supposed to be a.s.sociated with a relatively low transpiration (evaporation) so that excess water is held in the fruit. In certain seasons this condition is marked, and also in cloudy regions and often on young trees that have an over-supply of moisture. Yet such cores occur in old trees and sometimes with more or less regularity. What the physiological inability may be in such cases to dispose of excess moisture appears to be undetermined.

Now and then one finds a double apple, with two fruits grown solidly together, two blossom ends and a single stem. A seedling tree I knew as a boy bore such apples frequently, sometimes a score of them among the crop of the year. This, of course, is a malformation or teratological state. Apparently two flowers coalesce to form these fruits. On the tree of which I speak, the two fruits were about equal in size, making a large, widened, edible apple, but I have known of other cases in which a diminutive undeveloped fruit is attached to the side of a normal one.

Perhaps the oddest of them all is the "Bloomless apple." It is said to have no flowers. In fact, however, the flowers are present but they lack showy petals and are therefore not conspicuous. The bloomless apple is a monstrous state, the cause of which is unknown. Now and then a tree is reported. It was described at least as long ago as 1768, and in 1770 Muenchhausen called it _Pyrus apetala_ (the petalless pyrus). The flowers have no stamens, and apparently they are pollinated from any other apples in the vicinity. In 1785, Moench described it as _Pyrus dioica_ (the dioecious pyrus, s.e.xes separated on different plants). The ovary is also malformed, having six or seven and sometimes probably more cells, and bearing ten to fifteen styles.

The resulting fruit has a core character unknown in other apples but approached in certain apple-like fruits, as the medlar. The fruit has a hole or opening from the calyx (which is open) into the core; and the core is roughly double, one series above the other. The fruit, in such specimens as I have seen or read about, has no horticultural merit; but it is a curiosity of great botanical interest. It appears now and then in widely separated places, the trees probably having originated as chance seedlings. The fruits from the different originations are not always the same in size and form, but the flowers apparently all have the same malformed character.

The apple is preeminently the home fruit. It is not transitory. It spans every season. In an indifferent cellar I keep apples till apples come again. The apple stands up, keeps well on the table. Children may handle it. In color and form it satisfies any taste. Its rondure is perfect. The cavity is deep, graceful and well moulded, holding the good stem securely. The basin is a natural summit and termination of the curvatures, bringing all the lines together, finis.h.i.+ng them in the ornaments of the remaining calyx. The fruit adapts itself to the hand. The fingers close pleasantly over it, fitting its figure. It has a solid feel. The flesh of a good apple is crisp, breaking, melting, coolly acid or mildly sweet. It has a fracture, as one bites it, possessed by no other fruit. One likes to feel the snap and break of it. There is a stability about it that satisfies; it holds its shape till the last bite. One likes to linger on an apple, to sit by a fireside to eat it, to munch it waiting on a log when there is no hurry, to have another apple with which to invite a friend.

Now I am not thinking of the Ben Davis apple or any of its kind. I do not want to be doomed to one variety of apple, or even to half a dozen kinds, and particularly I do not want a poor one. There are enough good apples, if we can get them. The days of the amateur fruit-growers seem to be pa.s.sing. At least we do not hear much of them in society or in many of the meetings of horticulturists. There may be many reasons, but two are evident: we give the public indifferent fruits, and thereby neither educate the taste or stimulate the desire for more; we do not provide them places from which they can get plants of many of the choicest things. Yet on a good amateur interest in fruits depends, in the end, the real success of commercial fruit-growing. Just now we are trying to increase the consumption of apples, to lead the people to eat an apple a day: it cannot be accomplished by customary commercial methods. To eat an apple a day is a question of affections and emotions.

We have had great riches in our varieties of apples. It has been a vast resource to have a small home plantation of many good varieties, each perfect in its season. The great commercial apple-growing has been carried to high perfection of organization and care. More perfect apples are put on the market, in proportion to numbers, than ever before,--carefully grown and graded and handled. I have watched this American development with growing pride. The quant.i.ty-production makes for greater perfection of product, but it does not make for variety and human interest, nor for high-quality varieties. We shall still improve it. Masterful men will perfect organizations. The high character and attainment of the commanding fruit-growers, nurserymen and dealers are good augury for the future. But all this is not sufficient. Quant.i.ty-production will be an increasing source of wealth, but it cannot satisfy the soul.

The objects and productions of high intrinsic merit are preserved by the amateur. It is so in art and letters. It is necessarily so. A body of amateurs is an essential background to the development of science.

The late Professor Pickering, renowned astronomer, encouraged the amateur societies of star-observers, and others. The amateurs in the background, disinterested and unselfish, support appropriations by legislatures for even abstruse public work. The amateur is the embodiment of the best in the common life, the conservator of aspirations, the fulfillment of democratic freedom. I hope pomology will not lag in this respect. In all lines I hope that professionalism will not subjugate the man who follows a subject for the love of it rather than for the gain of it or for the pride of it. In horticulture, when we lose the amateur, who, as the word means, is the lover, we lose the ideals.

Naturally, the nurseryman cannot grow trees of all the good apples that may be wanted. The experiment stations cannot maintain living museums of them, for their function is to investigate rather than to preserve. Arboretums are concerned with other activities. Is there not some person of means, desiring to do good to his successors, ready now to establish a fructicetum _in perpetuum_ for the purpose of preserving a single tree of at least one hundred of the choicest apples, to the end that a record may be kept and that amateurs may be supplied with cions thereof?

XII

THE PLEASANT ART OF GRAFTING

If I procure cuttings of a good apple, what shall I do with them that they may give me of their fruitage?

The cuttings will probably be dormant twigs of the last season's growth. They may not be expected to grow when placed in the ground.

They are therefore planted in another tree, becoming cions. The case is in no way different in principle from the propagating of the young tree in the nursery, of which we already have learned. The nurseryman works with a small stock, a mere slip of a seedling one or two years old. The grower would better not attempt the making of nursery trees.

It is better for him to purchase regular nursery trees and to graft the cions on them; or he may put the cions in any older tree that is available.

I have spoken of my own collecting of certain dessert apples. I "worked" them on young Northern Spy trees, purchased when two or three years old; they were grafted after they had stood a year in the orchard. These Northern Spy trees, used in this case as stocks, were regularly grown by nurserymen. The Northern Spy was chosen because of its hardiness and straight, clean, erect growth, making it a vigorous and comely stock. Weak-growing varieties are usually rejected for this purpose. Some growers use Oldenburg as stock, and there are other good kinds.

From the young stock, the old head is to be removed and a new head (the new variety) grown in its stead. The tree, therefore, will be combined of three kinds of apple,--the root of unknown quality; the trunk or body under a varietal name; the top, of the variety desired.

Any number of different kinds of apple wood may be worked into the tree if the tree is large enough. If the operations are well performed so that there are no imperfect unions, and if the pruning is judicious, the tree may be grafted many times, in whole or in part.

I have said that my father brought apple seeds from New England and that the resulting seedlings were top-grafted. One of these trees was early top-worked to "Holland Pippin," which seldom bore. It stood in the yard near the smoke-house, where it found abundant nourishment. It grew to great size. In time I became a grafter of trees for the neighborhood, and often as I returned at night would have cions of different kinds in my pockets. It became a pastime to graft these cions in the old tree. More than thirty varieties were placed there.

It was with keen antic.i.p.ation, as the years came, that I looked for the annual crop, to see what strange inhabitants would appear in the great tree-top. I do not remember how many of these varieties came into bearing before the tree was finally gathered to the wood-box, but they were a goodly number, probably more than a score. I used often to wonder how it was that the nutrients taken in by the roots of the Vermont seedling and transported in the tissues of the Holland Pippin, combined with the same air, could produce so many diverse apples and even pears (for I had pears in that tree) each with the marks and flavor proper to its kind. The little cions I grafted into the tree were soon lost in the overgrowth, and yet all the branches that came from them carried the genius of one single variety and of none other.

And I often speculated whether there were any reflex action of these many varieties on the root, demanding a certain kind of service from it.

The cions (sometimes still called "grafts") are cut in winter or early spring, when well matured and perfectly dormant. Placed in sand in a cool cellar so they will not shrivel, they are kept until grafting time, which is early spring, usually before the leaves start on the stock. The cions may be placed on the tree by several methods, but only two are commonly employed,--the whip-graft and the cleft-graft.

The former is adapted to small stocks, the size of one's finger or smaller; it is the method employed in root-grafting in the nursery, and Fig. 16 explains it.

The requirement is to cause the cion and stock to grow together solidly, making one piece of wood. The growing plastic region is a.s.sociated with the cambium tissues underneath the bark. It is necessary, therefore, to bring the "line betwixt the wood and the bark" together in the two parts, and to hold the junction firm and also well protected from evaporation until union takes place. The method of putting the parts together, the form of whittling, is a matter of convenience and practice.

The case was put in this way by old Robert Sharrock, "Fellow of New-College," in his "History of the Propagation and Improvement of Vegetables by the concurrence of Art and Nature" (I quote from the second edition, Oxford, 1672): "Grafting is an Art of so placing the Cyon upon a stock, that the Sap may pa.s.s from the stock to the Cyon without Impediment." Batty Langley, in 1729, gave this direction in the "Pomona": "The Stocks being cleft, you must therefore cut the Cion in the Form of a Wedge, which must always be cut from a Bud, for the Reasons aforesaid; and then with a Grafting-Chizel open the Slit, and place the Cion therein, so that their Barks may be exactly even and smooth."

Still earlier (1626) did William Lawson, in "A New Orchard and Garden," set forth the rationale of the practice in his Chapter X, "On Grafting," in this wise: "Now are we come to the most curious point of our faculty: curious in conceit, but indeed as plaine and easie as the rest, when it is plainly shewne, which we commonly call Graffing, or (after some) Grafting. I cannot Etymoligize, nor shew the original of the word, except it come of graving and carving. But the thing or matter is: The reforming of the Fruit of one Tree with the fruit of another, by an artificial transplacing or transposing of a twig, bud or leafe, (commonly called a Graft) taken from one tree of the same, or some other kind, and placed or put to, or into another tree in due time and manner."

If the whip-graft is to be below the ground, it is sufficient to tie the parts tightly with string and cover with earth; if above ground, wax is applied over the string to prevent drying out. On the small shoots of young trees, the whip-graft is often employed, but it is not used in large trees.

The cleft-graft is shown in Fig. 18. The trunk or branch is cut off; two cions are inserted in a cleft made with a knife. The "stub" is covered with grafting-wax (Fig. 19). Cleft-grafting is the usual method for the orchardist.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 18. The cleft-graft.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: 19. The cleft-graft after waxing.]

In either kind of grafting, the cion carries about three leaf-buds. If "wood" (cion-shoots) is scarce, only one bud may be taken, but this reduces the chances of success. One bud may not grow, or the young shoot may be injured. The lowest bud is usually most likely to grow; it pushes through the wax.

In young trees set for the purpose of top-working, the trunk may be cut off at the desired height and two cions inserted. The entire top is then removed at once; this is allowable only on young trees.

Probably the better practice is to graft the main small side limbs and the main trunk or leader higher up. Usually it is better to leave some of the branches on the tree, not removing them all till the second or third year.

In old apple-trees, the main branches are grafted, where they are an inch or two in diameter. Care is taken so to choose the branches that a well-shaped free-headed tree will result. Only a small part of the top is removed the first year, and three or four years may be required to change the top all over, the old branches being removed as the new ones grow. In about three years, or four, the grafts should begin to bear,--about as soon as strong three-year-old trees planted in the orchard.

Any variety of the pomological apples will grow on any other variety, but apples do not take well on other species, as does the pear. The pear may be made to grow on the apple, but the graft is short-lived and the practice is not recommended. Boys may graft indiscriminately for practice, but grown-ups, having arrived at the unfortunate age of discretion, must operate only on those kinds known to succeed when joined. I have never known a boy who did not want to graft anything, as soon as his attention was called to the operation. The boy does not take it for granted: he wants to try.

XIII

THE MENDING OF THE APPLE-TREE

Many accidents overtake the apple-tree. The hired man skins the tree with the harrow; fire runs through the dry gra.s.s; hard winters shatter the vitality, and parts of the tree die; borers enter; rabbits and mice gnaw the bark in winter; loads of fruit and burdens of ice crush the tree; wind storms play mischief; bad pruning leaves long stubs, and rot develops; cankers produce dead ragged wounds; fire-blight destroys the tissue; a poorly formed tree with bad crotches splits easily; grafts fail to take, and long dead ends are left; the tree is injured by pickers; vandals wreak their havoc. All these accidents must be met and the damages repaired. The surgeon must be summoned.

We must first understand how a wound heals on a tree. Note any wound,--knot-hole on the trunk, place where wood has been removed. The exposed wound itself does not heal; it is covered and inclosed by tissue built out from the edges or periphery of the wound. This tissue is like a roll. It is the callus. Eventually the tissue meets in the center, and the lid is thereby put on the place, and it is sealed. The exposed wood has died, if it is the cross-section of a branch or a deep wound, and it remains under the callus a dead body. If the wood has not started to decay in the meantime, the place is safe, but too often invasion has begun before the process is complete, the rot disease finally extends to the heart of the tree, causing it to become hollow. If the center of the wound falls in, the callus cannot cover it, and an open sore remains. In these cavities birds may sometimes build.

Therefore there are two points for the surgeon to consider in respect to the wound itself--whether it is so placed on the tree that the callus forms readily; whether the wound is kept healthy during exposure.

All ragged tissue being removed, deep-wound surfaces should be kept aseptic. For ordinary cases, white-lead paint with plenty of linseed oil is a good protective from the germs of decay. On old wood, no longer active, creosote is good, perhaps followed by coal-tar.

Usually, however, paint is quite sufficient. Small exposures usually receive no dressing. When the fresh surface wood is exposed by removal of bark, it is necessary to keep the tissue from drying out, and antiseptics are usually not applied. Bandaging with cloth is the usual practice, after the wound is cleaned and trimmed.

The repairs fall into two cla.s.ses,--those that require merely removal of injured parts and treatment of the wounds, and those that demand the ingrafting of new wood.

We have learned, in the discussion of pruning, that long projecting ends of severed branches do not heal. The branches to be removed should be cut back close to the larger branch or to the juncture with another. In repairing injured trees, all projecting parts that do not have life in themselves must be removed. All wounds should be left smooth, without splinters or hanging bark. Decaying wood is to be removed, and the area cleaned out and disinfected.

The nature-lover may find much to interest him in the observation of knot-holes as he comes and goes. Every knot-hole has a history; this history usually can be traced by one whose eye is keen and who becomes practiced in connecting cause with final result. One prides oneself on the ability to work out the obscure cases. An old neglected apple orchard thereby affords much entertainment.

If a very large branch breaks off, the remaining part is cut back to fresh hard wood; antiseptic is applied; the other part of the tree may be shortened-in to aid in restoring the proportion or balance.

Deep cavities caused by rot are cleaned out, disinfected with bordeaux mixture, gas-tar, or other material, and the place filled completely with cement.

In some cases, new wood is added in the form of cions of last year's twigs. Such cions may be set around the edge of a stub, thrust between the bark and the wood, to start new branches where an important one was broken off. The cions are cut wedge-shape (much as those in Fig.

18) and a bandage is tied around the stub to hold them in place; the exposed parts are covered with grafting-wax. The operation is performed in spring.

Sometimes cions are used to bridge a girdle. Usually a girdle heals itself if the injury does not extend into the wood, and if it is bound up to prevent drying out; but when the injury is deep and the exposed wood has become dry and hard, the cions may be used. The cions are somewhat longer than the width of the girdle. The edges of the girdle are trimmed to fresh tight bark; cions are cut wedge-shape at either end; the ends are inserted underneath the bark at bottom and top of the wound; edges of the wound are securely bandaged; entire work is covered with wax. The cions are many, so close that they nearly touch.

The buds on the cions are not allowed to produce branches. This process is known as bridge-grafting.