Fig. 264. Currant cutting. One-third natural size.
If the cutting were planted in a plant rather than in the soil, we should have a graft; and the graft might grow. In this case, the cutting would not make roots, but it would grow fast to the other plant, and the twain would become one. When the cutting is inserted in a plant it is no longer called a cutting, but a cion; and the plant in which it is inserted is called the stock. The completed thing—the cion growing in the stock—is a graft.
Fig. 265. Cion for cleft-grafting. One-half natural size.
Plants are particular as to their companions, when it comes to such close relationships as these. They choose the stocks upon which they will grow; but we can find out what their choice is only by making the experiment. There are queer things about it. The pear grows well on the quince, but the quince does not grow so well on the pear. The pear grows on some of the hawthorns, but it is an unwilling subject on the apple. Tomato plants will grow on potato plants and potato plants on tomato plants. When the potato is the root, both tomatoes and potatoes may be produced; when the tomato is the root, neither potatoes nor tomatoes will be produced. Chestnuts are said to grow on some kinds of oaks.
Why do we graft? Think a bit. If I sow seeds of a Baldwin apple, I shall probably have as many kinds of apples as I have trees. Some of these apples may be like the Baldwin, and they may not. That is, apple seeds do not reproduce the particular variety. They will not be held to any stricter account than merely to produce apples; these apples may range all the way from toothsome kinds to Ben Davis. The nurseryman knows this, and he does not wait for the trees to bear in the hope that they will produce something to his liking. So he grafts them when they still are young,—takes a cion from the kind which he wishes to perpetuate. So it happens that all the Baldwins and the Kings and the Russets, and all other named varieties, are growing on alien roots; and what kinds of fruits these stocks would have produced no one will ever know, because their heads were cut off in youth and other heads were put on to order. In this way apples and pears and plums and peaches and cherries and apricots are propagated, for they will not grow readily from cuttings. But raspberries and blackberries and gooseberries and currants and grapes grow willingly from cuttings, and they are not grafted by the nurseryman.
Fig. 266. Cleft-graft. One-half natural size.
