GRAFTS AND THE PARENT TREE.
(Vol. vii., p. 365.)
I was surprised to find it stated as "a fact" by Mr. Ingleby, "that grafts, after some fifteen years, wear themselves out." A visit to one of the great orchard counties would assure him of the existence of tens of thousands of grafted apple and pear trees, still in a healthy state, and from forty to fifty years old, and more. There are grafted trees of various kinds in this country, which to my own knowledge are upwards of sixty years old; and I have little doubt but that there are some a good deal older.
The ancient Ribstone pippin, which stood in Ribstone Park, till it died in 1835, was believed to have been grafted. Such was the opinion of one of the gardeners there; and a writer in the Gardeners' Chronicle, 1845, p. 21., states that in 1830 he fell in with the Ribstone pippin in great abundance in Switzerland, in the valley of Sarnen; and he remarks that it is more probable this apple was introduced into England from that country, than the reverse. The question has not been conclusively settled.
Notwithstanding "the belief that the graft perishes when the parent tree decays" is pronounced by Mr. Ingleby to be a fond superstition, yet there are certain facts, well known to orchard growers, which give some warrant for it. Without committing myself altogether to this doctrine, I will state a few of them.
It is well known that no cider or perry fruit is so good, on first being introduced, as it is after fifteen or twenty years of cultivation. A certain period seems to be required to mature the new sort, and bring it to its full vigour (long after it is in full bearing) before it is at its best. The tree, with all its grafted progeny, will last, perhaps fifty, perhaps more than one hundred years, in a flourishing state, and then they will begin everywhere to decay; nor has any device yet been successful in arresting that general decay.
Witness the rise, progress, and fall of the Forest Stire of Gloucestershire, the Foxwhelp and Redstreak of Herefordshire, the Golden Pippin, and, more lately, the Ribstone Pippin, of which there is an increasing complaint, not to mention many others in the same condition. The first-named apple is very nearly extinct, and the small quantity of the fruit that is still to be had fetches enormous prices.
Whether this decay be owing to grafting, is a question which can be decided only by the future behaviour of the suckers from the original tree, several of which from the tree at Ribstone Park are now growing at Chiswick and elsewhere.
I am aware that Dr. Lindley combats very eagerly the doctrine that varieties of the apple and pear, or indeed of any tree, die naturally of old age; but the only incontrovertible fact which he adduces in support of his argument, is the existence of the French White Beurré pear, which has flourished from time immemorial. His denial of the decay of the Golden Pippin, the Golden
Harvey, and the Nonpareil, will not, I think, be allowed to be just by the experience of your readers; the existence of the last-named apple for three centuries, supposing it to be true, has not secured it exemption from the general fate.
H. C. K.
—— Rectory, Hereford.