President Morris: It can drag the stock along perhaps. It has been proved, I think, that a graft has a certain influence upon the stock, and in some cases can drag it along willy nilly to a certain extent. The root and the top get to balance each other fairly well if the root is very small at the time the graft is put on. Most of the trees that have been topworked to pecan have been various kinds of large hickories. Perhaps if you were to take a shagbark hickory one to two years of age and graft it, the pecan top would dominate or control that root, no matter whether it wanted to grow or not.
Mr. Reed: The claim is sometimes made that if the pecan is grafted on other hickory young enough, it will transform the hickory completely. It will make a sufficient root system to feed the pecan as well as the pecan root would. But I have never seen that demonstrated.
President Morris: That is speculative. It is a very valuable point, one of the sort of points that would naturally be brought out at a meeting of this kind.
Mr. Reed: Have you seen that with other fruits, Professor Craig?
Professor Craig: Yes. Each variety of apple produces its own kind of roots without reference to the seedling stock. That is to say the scion overrules the root in budding or grafting upon one or two year old seedlings.
President Morris: A parallel that comes to mind now is the grafting of Burbank's Royal walnut upon ordinary walnut stock. When that was done, his Royal walnut was said to drag the other walnut along.
Professor Craig: I think it is a very valuable suggestion. I am not sure I will go as far as the President has gone; but I think it is exceedingly suggestive, and worthy of careful consideration.
Mr. Rush (Pennsylvania): I find the same experience in some instances, that the graft outgrows the stocks. That is a peculiar instance of the work of improper unions. Eventually the stock pushes up and forms a perfect union in growth, with the Persian walnut. This is particularly applicable to pecan and hickory. I suppose Mr. Reed will bear me out in that, with regard to English walnut and black walnut.
Mr. Reed: Oh, yes.
President Morris: You occasionally see a variety of apple grafted on another in which the graft part gives the tree a sort of slipshod appearance. How about the bearing in that kind of a tree?