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Title: The Apple-Tree

Author: L. H. Bailey

Release date: July 26, 2008 [eBook #26132]
Most recently updated: January 3, 2021

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE APPLE-
TREE ***

THE APPLE-TREE

THE OPEN COUNTRY BOOKS

A continuing company of genial little books
about the out-of-doors

Under the editorship of
L. H. BAILEY

1. The Apple-Tree L. H. Bailey
2. A Home Vegetable Garden Ella M. Freeman
3. The Cow Jared Van Wagenen, Jr.

Others about weather and the sky, scenery,
camps, recreation, quadrupeds, fishes, birds,
insects, reptiles, plants, and the places in the open.

The Open Country Books—No. 1

THE APPLE-TREE

BY

L. H. BAILEY

NEW YORK
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1922

All rights reserved

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

Copyright, 1922,
By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.

Set up and electrotyped. Published January, 1922.

FERRIS PRINTING COMPANY
NEW YORK

CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. Where There is no Apple-Tree 7
II. The Apple-Tree in the Landscape 10
III. The Buds on the Twigs 15
IV. The Weeks Between the Flower and the Fruit 19
V. The Brush Pile 27
VI. The Pruning of the Apple-Tree 36
VII. Maintaining the Health and Energy of the Apple-Tree 41
VIII. How an Apple-Tree is Made 48
IX. The Dwarf Apple-Tree 54
X. Whence Comes the Apple-Tree? 60
XI. The Varieties of Apple 66
XII. The Pleasant Art of Grafting 79
XIII. The Mending of the Apple-Tree 85
XIV.Citizens of the Apple-Tree 89
XV. The Apple-Tree Regions 97
XVI.The Harvest of the Apple-Tree 102
XVII. The Appraisal of the Apple-Tree 107

1. The home apple-tree

THE APPLE-TREE

I

WHERE THERE IS NO APPLE-TREE
The wind is snapping in the bamboos, knocking together the resonant canes
and weaving the myriad flexile wreaths above them. The palm heads rustle
with a brisk crinkling music. Great ferns stand in the edge of the forest, and
giant arums cling their arms about the trunks of trees and rear their dim
jacks-in-the-pulpit far in the branches; and in the greater distance I know
that green parrots are flying in twos from tree to tree. The plant forms are
strange and various, making mosaic of contrasting range of leaf-size and
leaf-shape, palm and grass and fern, epiphyte and liana and clumpy
mistletoe, of grace and clumsiness and even misproportion, a tall thick
landscape all mingled into a symmetry of disorder that charms the attention
and fascinates the eye.
It is a soft and delicious air wherein I sit. A torrid drowse is in the receding
landscape. The people move leisurely, as befits the world where there is no
preparation for frost and no urgent need of laborious apparel. There are
tardy bullock-carts, unconscious donkeys, and men pushing vehicles. There
are odd products and unaccustomed cakes and cookies on little stands by
the roadside, where the turbaned vendor sits on the ground unconcernedly.
There are strange fruits in the carts, on the donkeys that move down the
hillsides from distant plantations in the heart of the jungle, on the trees by
winding road and thatched cottage, in the great crowded markets in the city.
I recognize coconuts and mangoes, star-apples and custard-apples and
cherimoyas, papayas, guavas, mamones, pomegranates, figs, christophines,
and the varied range of citrus fruits. There are also great polished apples in
the markets, coming from cooler regions, tied by their stems, good to look
at but impossible to relish; and I understand how these people of the tropics
think the apple an inferior fruit, so successfully do the poor varieties stop
the desire for more. There are vegetables I have never seen before.
I am conscious of a slowly moving landscape with people and birds and
beasts of burden and windy vegetation, of prospects in which there are no
broad smooth farm fields with fences dividing them, of scenery full of

herbage, in which every lineament and action incite me and stimulate my
desire for more, of days that end suddenly in the blackness of night.
Yet, somehow, I look forward to the time when I may go to a more
accustomed place. Either from long association with other scenes or
because of some inexpressible deficiency in this tropic splendor, I am not
satisfied even though I am exuberantly entertained. Something I miss. For
weeks I wondered what single element I missed most. Out of the
numberless associations of childhood and youth and eager manhood it is
difficult to choose one that is missed more than another. Yet one day it came
over me startlingly that I missed the apple-tree,—the apple-tree, the sheep,
and the milch cattle!
The farm home with its commodious house, its greensward, its great barn
and soft fields and distant woods, and the apple-tree by the wood-shed; the
good home at the end of the village with its sward and shrubbery, and apple
roof-tree; the orchard, well kept, trim and apple-green, yielding its wagon-
loads of fruits; the old tree on the hillside, in the pasture where generations
of men have come and gone and where houses have fallen to decay; the
odor of the apples in the cellar in the cold winter night; the feasts around the
fireside,—I think all these pictures conjure themselves in my mind to
tantalize me of home.
And often in my wanderings I promise myself that when I reach home I
shall see the apple-tree as I had never seen it before. Even its bark and its
gnarly trunk will hold converse with me, and its first tiny leaves of the
budding spring will herald me a welcome. Once again I shall be a youth
with the apple-tree, but feeling more than the turbulent affection of transient
youth can understand. Life does not seem regular and established when
there is no apple-tree in the yard and about the buildings, no orchards
blooming in the May and laden in the September, no baskets heaped with
the crisp smooth fruits; without all these I am still a foreigner, sojourning in
a strange land.

II

THE APPLE-TREE IN THE LANDSCAPE
The April sun is soft on the broad open fenced fields, waking them gently
from the long deep sleep of winter. Little rills are running full. The grass is
newly coolly green. Fresh sprouts are in the sod. By copse and highway the
shad-bushes salute with their handkerchiefs. Apple-trees show tips of
verdure. It is good to see the early greens of changing spring. It is good to
look abroad on an apple-tree landscape.
As to its vegetation, the landscape is low and flat, not tall. There is a vast
uniformity in plant forms, a subdued and constrained humility. A month
later the leafage will be in glory, but that also will have an aspect of
sameness and moderation. Perhaps the actual variety of species will be
greater than in many parts of the abounding tropics, and to the careful
observer the luxuriance will be as great, although not so big; but as I look
abroad I am impressed with the economy of the prospect. It comes nearer to
my powers of assimilation, quiets me with a deep satisfaction; the contrasts
are subdued, the processes grade into each other imperceptibly in the land
of the lingering twilight.
In this prospect are maples and elms and apple-trees. The maples and elms
are of the fields and roadsides. The apple-trees are of human habitations and
human labor; they cluster about the buildings, or stand guard at a gate; they
are in plantations made by hands. As I see them again, I wonder whether
any other plant is so characteristically a home-tree.
So is the apple-tree, even when full grown, within the reach of children. It
can be climbed. Little swings are hung from the branches. Its shade is low
and familiar. It bestows its fruit liberally to all alike.
The apple is a sturdy tree. Short of trunk and short of continuous limb, it is
yet a stout and rugged object, the indirectness of its branching branches
adding to its picturesque quality. It is a tree of good structure. Although its
limbs eventually arch to the ground, if left to themselves, they yet have
great strength. The angularity of the branching, the frequent forking, the big

healing or hollow knots with rounding callus-lips, give the tree character.
Anywhere it would be a marked tree, unlike any other.
The bark on the older surface sheds in short oblong irregular scales or plates
that detach perhaps at both ends and often at the sides, clinging by the
middle until the curl loosens them and they fall to the ground. These plates
or chips are more or less rowed up and down the trunk and on the larger
branches, yet the apple bark is not ridged and furrowed as on the elm. The
bark is not checked in squares as on old pear-trees nor peeling as on
cherries. In dry weather, the loose old bark is dark brown-gray, often
supporting gray lichens, but in rain it is soft and nearly black, yielding
pleasantly to the touch. In the forks, the bark is not so readily cast and there
the chips may lie in heaps. On the young limbs and small trunks the bark is
tight and close, not splitting into seams or furrows with the expansion of the
cylinder but stretching and throwing off detached flakes and chips. Under
the chips various insects hide or make some of their transformations. There
the codlin-moth pupates. The old remains of scale insects may be found on
the exterior. In the furrows about the dormant buds the eggs of plant-lice
pass the winter.
To destroy these breeding and hiding places, many careful apple-growers
scrape away the loose bark, being careful not to expose the quick living
tissue; and on the younger wood the eggs of aphis and other pests, as well
as cocoons and nymphs, are destroyed by vigorous winter spraying. The
regular spraying of apple-trees, in the different seasons, more or less
sterilizes the bark. Many forms of canker, due to fungi and bacteria, invade
the bark, making sunken areas and scars, often so serious as to destroy the
tree. All these features are discoverable in the apple-tree.
The trunk of the apple-tree is short and stout, usually not perfectly
cylindrical and not prominently buttressed at the base. In old trees it is
usually ribbed or ridged, sometimes tortuous with spiral-like grooves, often
showing the bulge where the graft was set. The wood is fine-grained and of
good color, and lends itself well to certain kinds of cabinet work and to the
turning-lathe for household objects; it should be better known.

2. The apple-tree in the landscape
If left to itself, the tree branches near the ground, making many strong
secondary scaffold trunks; but the plant does not habitually have more than
one bole, even though it may branch from the very base; it is a real tree,
even though small, and not a huge shrub. In the natural condition, the trunk
often rises only a foot or two before it is lost in the branches; at other times
it may be four or six feet high. Under cultivation, the lowest branches are
usually removed when the tree begins to grow, and an evident clean trunk is
produced. In Europe and the Eastern States, it has been the practice to trim
the trunk clean to the height of four or six feet; but in hotter and drier
regions the trunk is kept short to insure against sun-scald; and with the

better tillage implements of the present day it may not be necessary to train
the heads so high.
In old hill pastures, in many parts of the North, one sees curious umbrella
forms and other shapes of apple-trees, due to browsing by cattle. A little tree
gets a start in the pasture. When cattle are turned in, they browse the tender
terminal growth. The plant spreads at the base, in a horizontal direction.
With the repeated browsing on top, the tree becomes a dense conical
mound. Eventually, the leader may get a strong headway, and grows beyond
the reach of the browsers. As it rises out of grasp, it sends off its side
shoots, forming a head. The cattle browse the under side of this head, as far
as they are able to reach, causing the tree to assume a grotesque hour-glass
shape, flat on the under part of the head, with a cone of green herbage at the
ground. Sometimes pastures are full of little hummocks of trees that have
not yet been able to overtop the grazers.
The winter apple-tree in the free is a reassuring object. It has none of the
sleekness of many horticultural forms, nor the fragility of peaches, sour
cherries and plums. It stands boldly against the sky, with its elbows at all
angles and its scaly bark holding the snow. Against evergreens it shows its
ruggedness specially well. It presents forms to attract the artist. Even when
gnarly and broken, it does not convey an impression of decrepitude and
decay but rather of a hardy old character bearing his burdens. In every
winter landscape I look instinctively for the apple-tree.
We are so accustomed to the apple-tree as a part of an orchard, where it is
trimmed into shape and its bolder irregularities controlled, that we do not
think it has beauty when left to itself to grow as it will. An apple-tree that
takes its own course, as does a pine-tree or an oak, is looked on as unkempt
and unprofitable and as a sorry object in the landscape, advertizing the
neglect of the owner. Yet if the apple-tree had never borne good fruit, we
should plant it for its bloom and its picturesqueness as we plant a hawthorn
or a locust-tree.
In winter and in summer, and in the months between, my apple-tree is a
great fact. It is a character in the population of my scenery, standing for
certain human emotions. The tree is a living thing, not merely a something
that bears apples.

III

THE BUDS ON THE TWIGS
Now the buds begin to break. The firm winter-buds swell. Their scales part.
Tips of green appear. Tiny leaves come forth, neatly rolled inward, growing
as they expand, the stalks lengthening. Resurrection is astir in the tree.
Several leaves issue from every bud. From some buds arise only leaves;
from others a flower-cluster emerges from the leaf-rosette, showing faint
color even before it expands. Very close together and tight these unopened
little flowers are packed as they emerge; if we had looked at them with a
lens as they lay in the bud in the long winter we should understand why;
now they escape their bonds and rapidly grow as they are delivered, yet at
first pressed together by head and stem in their soft gray wool.
Thus are there two kinds of buds on the twig of the bearing apple-tree,—the
leaf-buds (sending forth leaves only), and the flower-buds (bearing both
leaves and flowers). And if we wish to analyze more closely, we discover
two kinds of leaf-buds,—those that send forth a rapidly growing shoot
bearing the leaves, and those from which the leaf-cluster remains practically
sessile on the branch. These latter, or the strongest and best of them, will
probably give rise to short fruiting spurs and the others to elongated leafy
branches.
Before me as I write is an apple limb more than three feet long. It has been
a vigorous grower, for it is only three years old. The years can be readily
made out; there are two sets of "rings" separating them. You may see these
rings on all young apple limbs. They represent the scars of the scales of the
past terminal buds.
Three years ago my shoot was sent off from its parent branch; that year it
grew but four inches, bearing leaves on its sides, in the axils of which
developed buds for the winter and at the end a larger terminal bud. Let us
call this shoot 1918. Two years ago (1919), whilst I was in a distant land,
the terminal bud gave rise to a shoot nineteen inches long; two buds near
the end of the 1918 shoot pushed out clusters of leaves and made spurs
about one-half inch long; all the other buds, five in number, remained

dormant, and now they are dead and are rapidly becoming mere scars. Last
year (1920) the terminal bud of 1919 gave rise to a shoot fifteen inches
long; three buds at the base of this two-year (1919) shoot remained
dormant; fourteen buds produced spurs. It is now the spring of 1921; the
1920 shoot has four dormant buds at its base, ten rosettes of leaves from the
other buds, and a pushing terminal shoot.
On my branch this year, therefore, are 5 plus 3 plus 4, or 12 dormant buds
of all the years; 2 plus 14 plus 10, or 26 spurs; 1 terminal bud continuing
the onward growth.

3. The bloom of the apple-tree

It is evident that the last two years were good ones for my apple limb, for
the growths were long (19 and 15 inches) and most of the buds produced
spurs. The result is evidenced also in the fact that the limb is this year laden
with potential bloom. On 1918 the two spurs bear flowers, one of them only
a single bloom and the other five blooms. On 1919 twelve of the fourteen
spurs are bearing flowers in the following numbers: 5 flowers, 5, 5, 7, 5, 6,
5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5 = 63 flowers. On 1920 are no spurs bearing flowers, but the
terminal bud (as is frequent on vigorous young trees) bears five flowers.
Here, therefore, on this yard of three-year-old twig are seventy-four
blossoms.
But there will not be seventy-four fruits; some of the flowers are small and
weak; others, as the petals fall, show unmistakable signs of failing. A few of
them show the plump form of an embryo apple: I think there are a score of
such promises. But I know that others will fail later from physiological
causes, and others probably from onslaught of insects or disease or from
accidents. If six fair fruits mature on a branch like this, the crop will be
good; and probably the branch would not have vigor enough to set as many
fruit-buds the following year or to bear as many fruits.
It is good to watch the opening of the apple bloom: pink buds swelling and
puffing out each day, the woolly stems elongating, the five overlapping
incurving petals spreading and growing big, the stamens, about twenty,
straightening up and lengthening their filaments that are attached on the
flower-rim; the big light yellow anthers shedding pollen; the five green
styles in the center. In some flowers the styles do not develop, and we have
one reason why many flowers are sterile.
The flower-clusters differ much among themselves, in size of parts, number
of flowers, color; on some trees the flowers appear in advance of most of
the leafage, but usually they are coincident with the leaves. Sometimes the
flower-stems or peduncles are branched, bearing two or three flowers, and
in that case there may be a small green leaf or bract where the fork arises.
The placing of the petals in the bud at the epoch of expansion may differ in
two flowers on the same tree. One petal may stand guard outside the others
and free from them, both edges uncovered, while the remaining petals are
spiral with one edge under and one edge over; or there may be two guard
petals, one on either side; or sometimes all the petals may be spiral, one

margin out, one margin in; in some cases all the petals stand free as the
flower is expanding, with no margin interlapping. Sometimes one petal is
missing, and again the petals may be six.
This infinite variety within the bonds of so great regularity lends a subtle
charm to natural objects, that is wholly absent in man's perfected machine-
work. Man aims at uniformity, two and two alike; nature aims at endless
difference, every object or even every member of an object having its own
character. Much of man's energy is expended in trying to overcome the
diverseness of nature.
Gradually and slowly the flower balloons enlarge and puff themselves up,
the petals standing together at their tips; all the variety is united into a
harmony of exuberance, color and form; then one day there is a shower of
genial rain, a warm sun, birds in the air, bees released, grasses soft and lush,
and behold! the apple-tree is in bloom,—a great heavenly mound of white
and pink exhaling a faint delicious breath. Then the pulses stir, the dogs
bark at the edges of the wood, the fields call, the scented winds lead on
forever.

IV

THE WEEKS BETWEEN THE FLOWER AND
THE FRUIT
The petals expand broadly, usually losing most of their pink. The blade is
oblong and rounded at the end, at first cupped and then nearly flat, three-
fourths of an inch long, narrowed at the base into a short stem-like part and
usually hairy there, the edges perhaps wavy but entire. The expanse of the
flower may be one and one-half to two inches. The brush of stamens, erect
in the center, sheds its pollen and the anthers collapse.
Then the petals fall, like flakes of snow, borne often by the wind. There
remain the stout woolly flower-stems an inch or more long and bearing
minute dry bracts, with the young fruit at the summit topped by the five
recurving woolly sepals and the pencil of stamens and styles. The bloom
being gone, the flowering system of the apple is thenceforth little observed.
Not until the fruit begins to color do we come back to the apple-tree to look
at it closely; yet in these intervening weeks some of the most interesting
transformations take place, and on the exact observance of them depends to
a large extent one's success in the rearing and saving of a good crop of
apples.
Here is the flower of the apple-tree (Fig. 3). It is a comely blossom, fragrant
and pinky white, flatly spread to the sky, carrying the spirit of the cool of
the spring. What concerns us now, however, is the cluster of stamens and
pistils in the center, for these organs are directly concerned in the
production of the fruit. The petals soon fall, but the remains of these interior
organs persist, even unto the ripening of the fruit.
The anther is attached at the back of its base or middle to the top of the
filament in the suture separating the two large cells. These anther-cells split
along the outer margins, releasing the pollen-grains.
In the center of the ring of stamens are the five style-branches, which are
united at the base into a short hairy column; the column is borne on the
ovary, which is sunken deep into the receptacle or stem (Fig. 4). It is down

these style-branches that the pollen-tube passes
on its way to the ovules or embryo seeds. The
top of the style is expanded into a cupped stigma
on which are many glutinous points. One can
observe the browning and ripening of the stigma
after pollen has been deposited by wind, bees or
other agencies. When the ovules are fertilized,
the forming fruit enlarges regularly unless it
meets with misfortune or is crowded out for lack
of room and nourishment.
If one cuts across the ovary or embryo fruit
4. Longitudinal section below the recurving sepals, one will see under a
of the flower. lens that it is neatly five-celled (Fig. 5). In each
cell are two ovules; these, if all goes well, will
ripen into ten seeds. These five cells comprise most of the diameter in the
cross-section: but as the ovary enlarges and the young fruit grows, one may
see that the inner part comprising the cells begins to have a character of its
own and to be differentiated from the surrounding flesh.
The "blossom" falls. In reality only the petals
fall. What is left is well shown in Fig. 6. Here
remain the upstanding stamens with the empty
anthers, and in the center one could see the five
styles if the specimen were in hand. Here also
are the calyx-lobes, widely spreading and even
recurved. The photograph for Fig. 6 was taken
May 3. On May 17 another cluster was
photographed from the same tree (Fig. 7). Three
of the flowers have produced sturdy young 5. Cross-section of the
apples. The stems or pedicels have become ovary.
stouter, and they begin to spread. Note that the
calyx now is closed, the old stamens protruding, a circumstance that will
have special significance when we become acquainted with the codlin-
moth. Note also that one flower has failed, and remains as it was two weeks
earlier; it will soon fall. The young apples begin to take shape. They show a
glow of red on the cheek. They are fuzzy all over. One of them is already

injured on one side, having been stung by a curculio or other insect: there
are keen senses about the apple-tree.

6. May 3—When the petals have fallen

7. May 17—When the young fruits begin to show

Two weeks later (May 31) still another cluster was taken from the same tree
(Fig. 8). Here are three fruits erect on their stems; one of them is more than
an inch in diameter either way, sturdy and unblemished; another shows
deformity due to insect puncture; the third remains small and presently will
drop. A scar in the leaf-axil marks the failure of another flower. Four
blossoms were in this cluster, but only one fruit now has a chance to come
to uninjured maturity, and two have already failed. The big apple has now
lost most of its fuzziness and begins to assume a delicate "bloom" on its
surface; the smallest one—the one that soon will perish—still holds some of
its fuzz. A section of this smallest fruit discloses empty cells; apparently it
was not fertilized.

8. May 31—The success and failure

9. June 14—The one big apple

Another two weeks have passed. It is June 14th. From the same tree is taken
the photograph, Fig. 9. Here is a big apple, 1-1/2 inch in diameter; and there
is a dead shrivelled fruit that dropped when I touched it. Of the several
flowers in the cluster, all have failed but one. This one fruit has now passed
the danger of the blossom-end infection by the codlin-moth and it has no
blemishes. The many whitish spots characteristic of the variety are now
conspicuous all over the surface. The ribs begin to show. There is a faint
blush on the upper side. The fuzz has disappeared and the bloom is
becoming evident. The calyx is tightly closed, although the tips of the
sepals are spread widely. The stem is stout. The weight of the apple inclines
it nearly to the horizontal. Yet this good apple is not symmetrical; one side
is larger than the other. I cut it crosswise and find two cells on the larger
side developing two strong seeds each, whilst those on the smaller side have
a single seed each and one of these seeds is small and perhaps would not
have matured. The fleshy part of the apple, outside the core, now occupies
about as much of the diameter as the core itself and much more than one-
half the bulk of the fruit. Already my apple, now half grown, shows many
of its distinctive characteristics.
Yet another fortnight has come and gone, and it is June 28th. It has been
good "growing weather." Summer is here, full-orbed, regal, bringing the
abundance of the earth. Here are two stout apples hanging on their stems
(Fig. 10), for they are now too heavy to be held erect. The larger fruit is a
trifle more than two inches in diameter. The feature spots are now still more
prominent on these apples, the ribs more pronounced, the blush against the
sun more warm. Both these fruits, from one spur, will mature; but the
smaller one will be blemished, for the apple-scab fungus has established
itself on the crown and about the calyx. Already the growth is checked in
that area, and the apple looks flattened. There is no evidence in either apple
of codlin-moth invasion. The adjoining spur, not clearly shown in the
photograph, is barren; it gave no flowers this year, and it shows no
indication of a blossom-bud for next year. The leaves are thick and
vigorous, yet they bear marks of insect injury and one of them has been
extensively skeletonized. On the whole, however, the fruits have the
mastery, and they now make a brave show.

10. June 28, and the apples have taken their form

July has passed this way. Tomorrow it will be August. The odor of apples is
now in my tree. There are big striped apples on the ground, plucked by the
wind, the hold loosened by bugs for they too have felt the fullness of July.
Three apples, one of them three inches through and two and one-half inches
high, and the others nearly as big, hang at the level of my eyes. You may
see them in Fig. 11. Here rises again my boyhood spent in an orchard now
passed away, as father and mother have passed, as playmates have fallen
one by one, the old place holding only memories. Here is my boyhood
because the earth is always young and repeats her miracles for the children
by my side as it did for me so many many years ago. Yet the miracles are
greater now than they were then. They have more meaning. Now are they
part of some great order. They are not separate. Without moving my feet, I
lay my hands on apples, Virginia creeper, asparagus, marigold, sweet sultan,
oxalis, plantain, crab-grass, white clover, all growing securely in one place,
and everyone like unto itself alone. Here is the everlasting miracle before

my eyes, and all miracles are mysteries. Once I thought I should understand
such things when I was "grown up," but I find myself still a boy.

11. July 31, and the apples are getting ripe

These three apples on the last of the days of July look fair and sound, partly
hidden in the leaves, the deep red colors covering them in broad splashed
stripes and relieved by light dots. Yet when I raise the leaves or when I lift
the apples apart, I find the burrows of insects. They know that these apples
are good. It is astonishing how nature covers up the wounds, how she
conceals the sore places, and how fair she makes everything look. Were it
not that she covers the depredations of man, the earth would not long
remain habitable by him.
Summer is ended. Today the sun is on the equator, and we are at the
equinox when nights are equal to the days, as the word testifies. The harvest
is over. The apples are no more. Yet the tree still is active and preparing for
another year (Fig. 12). The spurs are now thick and stout, bearing sturdy
hard leaves. The bud in the center is a big one, already recognized as a fruit-

bud: here is the promise of speckled, furrowed, striped apples next August.
Thereby I learn that it is not enough to be good to the tree in the year in
which I desire its fruit: I must begin the year before, and the year before
that, and even back at the time when the tree is planted; and if the tree at
planting-time is not a good tree, it will be at a disadvantage perhaps all its
life long.

12. September 22, and the buds are formed for the next year's crop

Finally the apple is ripe and ready. At the stem end is the "cavity," a
depression, deep or shallow, according to variety, in which the stem is set.
At the blossom end is the "basin," also with the characteristics of the variety
as to depth and width and contour, in which the calyx-lobes persist, and
inside the calyx are the remains of the dead stamens and styles; the calyx
may be "closed" or "open," the character being a mark of the particular
variety.
Cut the apple through the center lengthwise (Fig. 13); note the curved
outline of the core (the pistil) extending half or more across the fruit; if you
do not see this outline, cut an apple until you do; carefully open the five
cells or compartments and within the parchment walls find the two seeds
attached by their points which are directed toward the stem end; perhaps

one of the seeds has failed, but probably a cavity marks its place; perhaps
both seeds have failed; perhaps the cell has more than two seeds.

13. The apples in section

Cut an apple cross-wise: note the five radiating cells of the core, the number
and attachment of the seeds; note the ten points, imbedded in the flesh,
marking the outline of the core. Cut an apple cross-wise above the core and
beneath it; note where these points vanish and try to harmonize them with
the core-outline as seen in the lengthwise section; probably you will
discover why you may not see the core-outline in all the lengthwise sections
you make. Before you leave the fruit, note whether single seeds in a cell are
the same shape as the two seeds in a cell.
The flesh outside the core-outline is interpreted to be stem structure rather
than pistil structure. Sometimes an apple bears a scale-like leaf on its
exterior, suggesting that the outer part of the fruit is stem. The older
morphologists interpreted the apple flower to comprise a hollowed calyx

(calyx-tube) inside which is the pistil and on the rim of which are the petals
and stamens. The structure now is regarded as a hollowed receptacle or
stem (hypanthium), with the pistil inside, the petals and stamens on its rim.
We noted in the flower that the ovary part of the pistil is solidly imbedded
in this receptacle, but that the five styles are free. The pear and quince are
of similar structure, but the peach, plum and cherry are simple ripened
pistils.
Here, in this chapter, we have discovered some of the epochs in the life of
the apple. Usually we let the imagination run only to the mature fruit,
thinking of the harvest, but in all the weeks before the harvest the apple has
been growing and taking form. As these weeks have not been blank to the
apple-tree, so shall they not be blank to me.

V

THE BRUSH PILE
Today I visited the brush pile back of the orchard. Here the trimmings of the
winter are placed, waiting to be burned when dry. How many are the
archives that will be destroyed! Here are histories in every bud and twig and
scar, of the seasons, of the accidents and deaths, the records of the tree as
there are records of families.
These records are not written in numbers or in letters, nor yet in
hieroglyphs; yet are they understandable. Alphabet is not needed, and the
key is simple.
From the brush pile of records I took one. I must describe it in part by a
picture (Fig. 14). On the living trees at this writing the petals mostly have
fallen and the leaves are nearly full grown. This branch was cut in winter. It
has lain in the snow and rain, putting forth no flowers or leaves. Yet we can
read it.
It is May, 1921. The terminal shoot is obviously of 1920; we shall name it
No. 1. It is a foot long, smooth and glossy, terminating at the base (o) in a
"ring" and at a short stub or branchlet. If we count the buds on all sides of
the shoot and at the tip we find them to be 13. The largest one is at the tip,
and they are mostly successively smaller toward the base. Apparently the
growth-energy was expended in the upper parts of the twig, making large
full buds. In fact, the three or four lowermost buds are scarcely developed
and would not grow unless the limb were broken off above them; they are
dormant buds.

14. A three-year record.—In a leisure hour, trace the history
of these parts; it will open your eyes.

Looking along the shoot, I find that every six buds stand in the same line:
the sixth bud is over the first, seventh over the second, eighth over the third.
If I were to fasten a string to bud No. 1 and wind it around the stem to my
left, passing over every bud until I had reached the sixth, I should find that
it had made two circuits of the stem (passed twice around it) and had passed
over five spaces between buds. This is the leaf-arrangement or phyllotaxy
of the apple-tree, expressed by the fraction 2/5. The space between two
buds is two-fifths of a diameter, and two circuits (ten-fifths) must be passed

before a bud comes over the one from which we started. The 2/5 leaf-
arrangement obtains on cherry, peach, apricot, pear, raspberry and many
others; but a very different order is that of the linden, grape, currant, lilies,
elm, maple.
We cannot understand this simple unbranched terminal twig (No. 1) until
we know what took place last year. A year ago, in the spring of 1920, a
terminal bud that had formed in 1919 expanded and gave rise to this rapidly
growing shoot. By the end of May or early June this shoot had grown to
twelve inches long, for the growth in length on the twigs of trees is usually
completed that early. This shoot bore leaves on the 2/5 arrangement; in the
axil of every leaf was a bud, the strongest buds being with the strongest
leaves at the middle and top of the shoot; in the autumn of 1920 these
leaves fell, but the buds remained, persisted the winter, and were ready to
"grow" in the early spring of 1921. We see them on No. 1 (Fig. 14).

15. The growing shoot, with a bud in each axil,
and a spur on last year's growth.

In 1921 these buds on No. 1, then, would have grown. New leaves would
have come from the bud itself; in fact, the winter buds of the apple are
packed with miniature leaves and sometimes with flowers as well. The
shoot coming out of the bud may remain very short, constituting a "spur," or
grow with long internodes, making a slender twig. Fig. 15 shows a branch
with new elongated growth, b to a, and a shoot or spur (c) arising from a
bud of the previous year. Note the "ring," or division beyond b, marking the
turn of the year.

It will be noted in Fig. 14 that the buds are of two shapes and sizes, such as
a, a, a, representing one kind and b, b, the other kind. The former, small and
pointed, are leaf-buds; from them will arise a shoot bearing only leaves. The
latter, b, large and rounded and usually more fuzzy, are flower-buds (fruit-
buds): from them will arise a short shoot bearing leaves and a cluster of
flowers; and we hope that at least one of the flowers will set fruit.
We are now ready to resume our lesson with the branch before us. We have
identified the slender terminal part, No. 1, as the growth of 1920. We are
now to account for all the remaining buds and branchlets.
If No. 1 grew in 1920, then the main shoot of No. 2 grew in 1919, from the
point o o. It is also one foot long. Near its base are four small buds that
remained dormant in 1920. There are nine branches (d) of various lengths
besides the terminal shoot No. 1, all of which grew in 1920, for they are
naturally a year younger than the main axis from which they arise; these
branches are the same age as No. 1, with buds that would have produced
shoots in 1921. But the terminal buds of eight of these lateral shoots (all but
the lowermost) bear blossom-buds at the end; note their size and shape. Had
not the branch been cut, these buds would have bloomed in 1921; the eight
of them would have produced probably forty to fifty flowers; perhaps two
or three good fruits would have resulted. Note that two of the lateral
branches or spurs are short and weak: these would soon perish. The No. 2
branch has a dead end (e); in some way the terminal bud was destroyed, and
No. 1 sprang from a lateral bud beneath it, changing the direction of
growth.
If No. 2 grew in 1919, then No. 3 grew in 1918. It also grew about one foot
in length, showing that the conditions in the three years must have been
very uniform. There are remains of five dormant buds at its base. There are
seven side branches. As the main axis is three years old, so these lateral
shoots are two years old; they are the same age as the axis No. 2. The lower
one (s) grew less than an inch in 1919, and made a fruit-bud; in 1920 it
blossomed and one fruit set as is shown by the square scar at the end; as the
scar is small and the twig weak, we are safe in assuming that the apple was
very small or else did not mature. A bud formed at the side of s to continue
the growth of the spur next year (1921), but it is a leaf-bud; apparently there
was not sufficient energy to bear flowers and to make a fruit-bud; so there

would have been no more fruit on this spur earlier than 1922: thus do we
see that the alternate bearing of the apple-tree may have some of its origin
in the fruit-spur.
The side spur f produced a terminal blossom-bud in 1919. In 1920 six
flowers opened,—I could count the scars. One of the flowers produced a
fruit, as I tell by the square scar at the end; the thickened stem also indicates
fruit-bearing. The side bud in this case is a fruit-bud, but it is small and
weak and is probably incapable of producing a fruit. There are no strong
leaf-buds to take up the work, and this spur (f) would probably soon have
died, as also would spur s.
The side shoot g grew to h in 1919 and made a flower-bud. In 1920 this bud
gave blossoms and one fruit resulted; the scar is prominent and there is an
enlargement of the tissue indicating that the fruit probably attained good
size; in 1920 also, two side spurs were formed each with weak blossom-
buds, also a terminal shoot (beyond h) with leaf-bud at the end.
The other shoots have similar histories: the long shoot i bore a fruit-bud at k
in 1919 and a fruit in 1920; in 1920 it also made three lateral shoots and a
terminal shoot, with flower-buds terminating two of them. Shoot l bore
flowers at its point in 1920 but did not carry the fruit to maturity; it also
made two side growths and one terminal growth, all terminated by flower-
buds, to be blown in 1921. The shoot m is a short spur that made a flower-
bud in 1919 and in 1920 carried three little fruits for a time and made a
flower-bud in 1920. Shoot n remained very short in 1919, making a
terminal leaf-bud; in 1920 it grew two inches and made a weak flower-bud.
If shoot No. 3 grew in 1918, then No. 4 grew in 1917; but the branch is
severed and I cannot trace the record farther. We could trace the family
history many years if we had the unpruned tree before us.
Here, then, in my yard-long manuscript are forty bud-records on the main
axis, counting the terminals on No. 2 and No. 3. I can find record of 144
buds on the side shoots. This makes a grand total of 184 buds. There is a
total growth in length of 108 inches, or 9 feet. Each of the buds that has
already "grown" has produced an average of probably ten leaves, or say 340
leaves in total. If there were an average of five flowers to the cluster, then
about 150 flowers would have been carried on my branch, with the

potentiality of 150 fruits; but in fact not more than three or four maturing
fruits would have been produced in these years: and I should think this a
good proportion as blossoms and apples go. Certainly the branch has done
its part. There have been three eventful years.
I would not have my reader to suppose that one may always distinguish
leaf-buds and fruit-buds at a glance. I may be mistaken in some of the
above determinations, but they are essentially correct for I have the twig
before me. In some varieties of apples the differences between the two
kinds of buds are less marked. The certain way is to dissect the bud: one
may then see what it contains.
It now remains to determine how the branch was placed in the tree. It must
have been upright or very nearly so, for the main axis is essentially straight
and the branchlets are about equally developed on all sides; moreover, there
is no indication in the bark that one exposure was the "weather side." The
big twig i apparently found a light and unoccupied space into which to
develop, but its extension is not greatly out of proportion. I suppose,
however, that my branch was not topmost in the tree; there is no indication
in very long growth or strong upward tendency of the branchlets to mark
the branch as a "leader."
Years ago I became fascinated with the study of knots and knot-holes in the
timber of wood-piles. They are excellent records of the events in the life of
trees. In print I have tried to show what they mean. I also worked out the
life-histories of twigs and published them in nature-study leaflets and
elsewhere. Hundreds of children were interested in the twigs and buds,
finding them unusual, every one of them a different story, and yet not
difficult to read. These lessons gave meaning to trees and seasons. Such
observations have always meant much to me, even when made in the most
casual way in the midst of constraining activities. And now in this later day
I come back to a bare twig with all the joy of youth. The records of the
years are in these piles of brush.

VI

THE PRUNING OF THE APPLE-TREE
We have found that not all the buds grow. We also know that some of the
spurs and shoots perish, not alone from accident but from defeat in the
struggle to live. The chances of success are relatively few. The pruning
process begins early in the life of the tree, and it continues ceaselessly until
the end.
To the apple-tree in the wild, strict pruning is the assurance of success. No
tree can reach maturity unless more parts perish than are able to live. The
young forest tree has branchlets and leaves along its side and at the top. All
these perish as the trunk rises, often leaving marks on the bark, curls in the
wood, and knot-holes large and small. Thousands of perished buds and
branches are the price of a straight bole and great clear sheets of boards. Yet
these perished parts bore their burden in their day and time, and contributed
to the ultimate success: there could have been no tree without them.
Any tree-top discloses the pruning in action if one looks intently. Part of it
is recorded in the buds that never put forth a leaf; more of it in little shoots
left behind; and there are large and small limbs, dead and dying, yellowing
apparently before their time, hanging on till the last hold is broken. Were it
not for the benevolent processes of decay, the ground would be strewn with
the fallen parts accumulating through the years.
In nature, the great result is to yield abundant quantity of seeds, that the
species may propagate itself after its kind. Man may desire fruits relatively
few, but large of size and excellent of quality, without spot or blemish; this
means greater opportunity and care to the single fruit. Pruning is essential,
to converge the energy of the plant into fewer branches, to give the fruits
space and light, to increase the efficiency of measures for the control of
diseases and insects. Part of the pruning consists in removing certain
branches, and part of it in eliminating the fruits themselves by the careful
process of thinning.
The pruning of nature is fortuitous. The tree has the irregularity and
abandon of the picturesque. The pruning of man is for a different end, and it

produces the comely well-proportioned tree of the orchards. The tree
becomes a manipulated subject, comforting to the eye of the thrifty
pomologist.
Branch-pruning is essentially the removal of superfluous branches,—those
that crowd, that cross each other, that are so placed as to be profitless, that
are in the way, that are injured or diseased. For the most part, the branches
should be removed when they are small; but it is not possible to foresee all
that may be needed in the training of the tree and, therefore, the frequent
advice to prune only with a hand-knife cannot be followed. One needs a
sharp pruning-saw and sometimes a chisel on a long handle. Usually it is
not necessary to remove branches more than an inch or one and one-half
inch in diameter if pruning is carefully practiced every year; but sometimes
even well-pruned trees must be shaped, corrected and improved by the
cutting of larger branches.
Pruning is usually best performed in early spring. The branch should be cut
close to the main limb or trunk and parallel with it, leaving no stub; the
healing process is then likely to proceed more rapidly. The wound should be
smooth and clean, without breaks, splinters or splits; the knot-holes in logs
and trunks are usually the consequence of long "stubs" and torn injured
parts. The tree is to be left shapely, with a uniform distribution of branches,
plenty of fruit-bearing wood, easy to spray and from which to pick the fruit,
of the form characteristic of the variety.
In all the usual customary pruning of the apple-tree, dressing of the wounds
is not necessary. It is much more important to give the added attention to
the proper making of the wounds and the thoughtful choice of the parts to
be removed. Wounds two inches and more in diameter may be protected
with good paint, so that they will not check and therefore not hold water,
until the callus covers them. Good judgment in pruning is more profitable
than recipes to repair damage.
Fruit-pruning, or thinning, is the removing of so much fruit, when it is
small, as will allow the remainder to mature to its best and constitute a
maximum yield; it reduces the quantity of inferior fruit, lessens the number
of culls and the labor at packing time, conserves the energy of the tree by
preventing the maturity of great numbers of seeds, diminishes diseases and

pests. The overloading of the tree not only imposes a heavy tax on its
vitality but is likely to break the limbs and to work much physical damage.
Thinning may consist in removing part of the fruit in the cluster (in the case
of varieties that tend to mature more than one fruit from each flower-
cluster), in picking all the fruits from certain clusters or pairs of clusters, or
in cutting away some of the fruit-spurs before blossoming time.
The removal of the fruit itself is usually performed after the "June-drop,"
when the extent of the crop is evident. The fruits are pulled off by hand or
cut with thinning-shears, the latter practice being the better since it is not so
likely to break the fruit-spurs. The least promising fruits are taken away and
the remaining apples are left at least five or six inches apart in most
varieties. The extent of thinning must be governed by the variety, thrift of
the tree, result desired, and other conditions. To secure the best results, the
apples should be thinned when still small.
Thinning by early-spring removal of fruit-spurs is a very special practice. It
is employed on dwarf trees and on those specially trained. It should be
undertaken only by a careful and experienced man. It is not to be inferred
that the fruit of the apple is all borne on spurs, for some of it may be
derived from terminal buds on the new axial growths or even from lateral
buds; but the spurs are conspicuous and readily recognized. Of course the
ordinary pruning of the tree removes fruit-bearing wood and is therefore a
thinning process.
Within sensible limits, therefore, pruning is an invigorating process in the
sense that it deflects the energy to remaining parts of the tree. What is
called too heavy pruning, whereby the tree throws out abundance of water-
sprouts, is illustration of this fact: the tree is thrown into heavy growth of
adventitious shoots. The tree may not produce more pounds of substance, or
even more total feet in length, but new energy is developed in certain parts.
In the restoration, or so-called renovation, of old neglected trees, the two
primary considerations are to prune vigorously and to till and fertilize the
land. Sometimes old trees must be mended as explained in Chapter XIII. Of
course they must be sprayed for what ails them. If the variety is poor, the
tree may be top-grafted (Chapter XII). In some cases, it is hardly possible to
make neglected trees bear satisfactorily, for they were never of value: there

is nothing to restore. It may be a question of soil and location, of lack of
pollination, of trees so weak or so misshapen that effort on them is wasted.
But tillage, pruning, spraying, should produce worth-while results in most
cases.
In the care of the fruit-tree there is no practice which brings the grower into
such intimate knowledge of the plant as that of pruning and thinning. The
operator sees the tree as a whole, taking it all in; then he sees it in small
detail in all its parts, even to the spurs and buds. With simple good tools,
sharp and keen, and with a practiced eye, he applies a deft and swift
handicraft, cutting true, making a fair clean wound, leaving the tree comely
and ready for its highest effort. The pride of good workmanship may find
expression. The operator feels also the sense of mastery that is in him,
whereby he corrects the tree, removes the wayward parts, keeps and
encourages all that is best. To engage in this kind of education requires that
one approaches the work with due preparation of mind and I think also with
consecration of heart.

VII

MAINTAINING THE HEALTH AND ENERGY
OF THE APPLE-TREE
The apple-tree starts life fresh and vigorous. It grows rapidly. The shoots
are long and straight. The wood is smooth and fair and supple. The leaves
are usually large. It is good to see the young trees acquire size and take
shape.
Room in the ground and in the air is ample with the young apple-tree. It is
free to grow. Probably the ground was newly prepared and tilled when the
tree was planted; at least, a hole was dug and fine good earth was placed
about the roots. Probably insects had not found permanent encampment on
the tree. It had been well pruned, so that it carried the minimum of
superfluous and competing parts.
But in time the difficulties come. The tree probably slows down. It becomes
too thick of branches. The land is not tilled. It is not manured. Insects and
fungi make headway. The tree overbears. As the years go on, the tree is
thrown into alternate bearing, one year a crop too heavy, one year a crop too
light. The tree becomes broken, diseased, gnarly, unshapely.
We have seen that the fruit-spur in bearing is likely to make a leaf-bud for
the next year's activities rather than a flower-bud. It is assumed that the
making of a flower-bud requires more energy than the making of a plain
leaf-bud; if this is true, there may not be energy enough to carry a flower-
cluster and to make a new flower-bud at the same time. But if the tree is in
proper vigor, is well fed, protected from noxious organisms, not allowed to
overbear, it should have sufficient energy to make a crop every year, frosts
and accidents excepted. It is assumed, of course, that self-sterile varieties
have good pollinizing varieties near them; it is always well to plant two or
more kinds near together. Whether the continuity of bearing is exhibited on
the same fruit-spurs or whether there may be an alternation in the spurs on
the same tree, is of no moment in this discussion. It is enough to say that
there is no reason in the nature of the case why an apple-tree should bear
only every other year; it is probably a question of nutrition.

The first essential to continued health and vigor is to start with a strong
unblemished tree. It is to be planted before its vitality is lessened by
exposure and hard usage. The more direct the transfer from nursery to
orchard, the better. It is to be placed in good ground, well drained and
deeply spaded or plowed. The apple-tree thrives on many kinds of land, but
light sand, hard clay, and muck are equally to be avoided. "Good corn land"
is commonly considered to be good apple land. Certain soils and regions are
particularly adaptable to commercial apple-growing, but the amateur may
plant quite independently of this fact. The observant man notes the many
conditions under which the apple-tree may be grown with satisfaction.
If the land is not uniformly prepared, then the hole dug for the tree should
be larger than demanded by spread of roots, and the earth fined in the
bottom of it. Trees should be planted when perfectly dormant, preferably in
spring, at least in the northern parts.
The roots should be cut back to sound unsplintered wood, and very long
roots may well be shortened. The reader is aware that roots have no regular
order or arrangement as do the buds from which branches arise. It is not
necessary to try to shape the root-system to any formal regularity.
As a good part of the root-system is destroyed when the tree is dug, so is the
top reduced to insure something like a balance. Half or more of the top, on a
three-year-old tree, is cut away, the long growths being shortened to
perhaps three or four good buds. If limbs are left to form the framework of
the future top, they should be alternate with each other at some distance
apart so that weak crotches do not form.
The tree is planted snugly, the earth being filled among the roots so that no
air-holes remain. The tree is shaken up and down to settle the earth densely.
Once or twice in filling, the earth is packed with the feet. The purpose is to
keep the tree firm and stiff against winds, and to give all its roots close
contact with the earth. Properly planted, so that it will not whip or dry out,
the tree gets a hold quickly and begins to grow strongly. The first start-off
of the tree is important.
Apple-trees are held in vigor by plenty of room. For the standard varieties
in regular orchards, the recommended distance either way is 40 feet, or 35 x
40 feet. Some varieties may go as close as 30 feet; and in regions (as parts

of central and western North America) in which the trees are not expected
to attain such great size as in the eastern country, the planting may be even
less than this of the upright-growing kinds. The spaces between the trees
may be utilized for a few years with other crops, even with other fruits, as
peaches or berries. Orchardists sometimes plant smaller-growing and early-
bearing varieties of apples between the regular trees as "fillers," taking them
out as the room is needed. Of course all kinds of double cropping require
that extra attention be given to the tilling and fertilizing of the plantation.
The general advice for the growing of strong apple-trees is to give the land
good tillage from the first and to withhold other cropping after the trees
come into profitable bearing. Clean tillage for the first part of the season
and the raising of a cover-crop in the latter part, to be plowed under, is a
standard and dependable procedure. Trees live long in continuous sod and
they may thrive, but they may be expected to show gains under tillage. Vast
areas of apple plantings are in sod, but this of itself does not demonstrate
the desirability of the sod practice. Allowing trees to remain in sod usually
leads to neglect.
There is a modification of sod-practice in some parts of the country that
gives excellent results, under certain conditions. The grass is cut and
allowed to lie, not being removed for hay. Manure and fertilizer are added
as top-dressing, as needed. This method is known as the "sod mulch
system." It is not a practice of partial neglect, like the prevailing sod
orchards, but a regular designed method of producing results. Its application
can hardly be as widespread as clean tillage, on level lands.
It is a common opinion that hillsides and more or less inaccessible slopes
should be planted to apples. This may be true in the sense that apples will
grow on such areas and that such plantations are better than fallow land. In
fact, many such lands are profitable in orchards. When they do not allow of
tillage, easy spraying, and economy in harvesting, however, they cannot
compete with level orchards.
To maintain the health and energy of the apple-tree, the land should be
enriched. This may be accomplished by the application of animal manures,
chemical fertilizers, or cover-crops, or preferably by a combination of these
means. Not many persons possess sufficient farm manures to supply the

general crops and the apple-orchard; but every application the orchard
receives is all to the good. Five to ten tons of good stable manure to the acre
annually is a good addition for an orchard in bearing. This may be
supplemented by cover-crops and bag fertilizers in years in which the
manure is not available. Experiments are yet inconclusive on the fertilizing
of apple-trees, but it is fair to assume that on most lands, particularly on old
lands, the addition of chemical fertilizer is advantageous. A bearing apple-
tree may receive two to eight pounds of nitrate of soda (depending on its
size and on soil) applied to the full feeding area of the roots, five to nine
pounds of acid phosphate, two or three pounds of muriate of potash; always
ask advice.
The pasturing of orchards is often defensible and sometimes even desirable.
If the trees are growing too rapidly, they may be "slowed down" by seeding
to grass for a time; and pasturing with hogs, and possibly with sheep, may
afford a way of keeping the area in condition and of adding fertilizer. Sheep
that do not have access to drinking-water and salt gnaw the trees. Hogs root
up the ground and thereby provide a rude kind of tillage. If animals are fed
other food in the orchard, the fertilizer increment will be considerable.
In house-lot conditions, the apple-tree usually receives sufficient food if the
land is well enriched for garden purposes; but trees in sod should have
liberal top-dressings of fertilizer every year and of stable manure every
other year.
The apple-tree should have a good supply of moisture. Planted on banks
and in hard places about buildings, it may suffer in this respect. The land
should be so graded that the rainfall will not run off. In orchard conditions,
the moisture is conserved by the addition of humus to the land, and by
thorough judicious tillage; and in dry regions it is supplied by irrigation.
The energy of the apple-tree, and its ability to produce, is conserved by
holding all diseases and noxious insects in check. The means at the
command of the apple-grower are now many. No longer is the man
helpless, nor does he need to appeal to the moon or to "atmospheric
influences" for reasons. The natural histories of fungi and insects, that do so
much damage, are now a part of common understandable knowledge. To
acquire at least a working understanding of the commonest of these subjects

is in itself a great satisfaction and gives one a sense of dominion. The good
books and bulletins are sufficient to keep one well informed. All these
organisms are tenants of the apple-tree, and from the naturist's point of view
alone they are not to be overlooked.
It is not to be inferred that all apple-trees will yield equally well with
equally good treatment. There is difference in trees as there is in cows. We
may not know why. But even so, it is our part to do the best we can: this is
our privilege.
The tillage and care of plants lessen the struggle for existence. So is the
apple-tree protected from the crowds, from contest for moisture and food,
from insects, and from the competition within itself. Thereby is it able to
express all its possibilities. Even the dormant potentialities may be
wakened, and the plant makes a wide departure from its native state. This is
not an original state of sin, but a state of repression in which it is held in a
world that is full of so many things beside apple-trees. I may till my orchard
ever so well, manipulate the trees ever so promptly, yet if the plantation
then is allowed to run to neglect the processes of depreciation gain the
mastery; the struggle for existence is restored.
To keep one's apple-tree in the pink of perfection is as joyful an enterprise
as to do anything else well. It is only the well-conditioned tree that yields its
glorious harvest year by year.

VIII

HOW AN APPLE-TREE IS MADE
If the seeds of a Baldwin or Winesap apple are planted, we do not expect to
get a Baldwin or Winesap; we shall probably raise a very inferior fruit. The
apple has not been bred "true to seed" as has the cabbage and sweet pea. To
get the tree "true to name," of the desired variety and with no chance of
failure (barring accident), is one of the niceties of horticulture. This is
accomplished with great precision and despatch.
The apple-tree is started from the seed. It cannot be grown freely by means
of cuttings, as can the grape and currant. In commercial practice the seeds
are collected mostly from cider mills or from pomace. The seeds may be
washed from the pomace, allowed to dry, and then mixed in sand, charcoal,
sawdust or other material to prevent dessication and kept until spring, when
they are sown. Or, if the land is not so wet in winter that the seed will
drown or be washed out, the seed in the pomace (not separated) may be
sown in autumn. The seeds are sown in drills, after the manner of onions or
turnips, one to two or even three inches deep. They germinate readily in the
cool of spring, and the plants should reach a height of twelve inches and
more the first year.
If these plants were grown directly into bearing trees, it is probable that no
two trees would produce the same kind of fruit. Some of the fruit might be
summer apples, some of it winter apples, some red, yellow or striped, some
of it flat, oblong or spherical, most of it sour but perhaps some of it sweet.
Probably every kind would be inferior to the parent stock or to standard
varieties, although there is a fair chance that a superior kind might originate
from a field of such plants.
Therefore, it is not the variety (that is, the top) that is wanted in the raising
of these numerous plants, but merely the roots, on which desired varieties
may be grown by the clever art of graftage. Yet not even all the roots may
be wanted, for the growing plants may differ or vary in their stature and
vigor as well as in their fruit. The discriminating grower, therefore, discards
the weak and puny treelings at the digging time; or if the weak plants seem

still to have promise, they may be allowed to grow another year before they
are dug for the grafting.
This digging time is the autumn of the first year, when the plants have
grown one season. They are then to be used as "stocks" on which to graft
Baldwin, Winesap or other varieties. The growing of these apple stocks is a
business by itself. Formerly, most of the stocks used in North America were
imported from France, where special skill has been developed in the
growing of them and where the requisite labor is available. But now the
stocks are grown also in deep rich bottom lands of the Middle West, as in
Kansas, where, in the long seasons, a large growth may be attained.
The methods of graftage of the commercial apple-tree are two—by cion-
grafting whereby a bit of wood with two or three buds is inserted on the
stock, by bud-grafting (budding) whereby a single bud with a bit of bark
attached is inserted under the bark of the stock.
Cion-grafting is practiced in winter under cover. The stock is cut off at the
crown and the cion spliced on it, or the root may be cut in two or more
pieces and each piece receive a cion. The union is made by the whip-graft
method (Fig. 16). The cion is tied securely, to keep it in place. The piece-
root method is allowable only when the root is long and strong, so that a
well-rooted plant results the first year. The cion is a cutting of the last year's
growth (as of No. 1, in Fig. 14). However accomplished, the process is to
supply the cion with roots; it is planted in another plant instead of in the
ground.
The cion-grafts are now planted in the nursery row in spring. The cion starts
growth rapidly, only one shoot being allowed to remain; this shoot forms
the trunk or bole of the future tree. At the end of the first season, the little
tree is said to be one year old, although the root is at least two years old; at
the end of the second year it is two years old; the tree is sometimes sold as a
two-year-old, but usually a year later as a three-year-old having a four-year-
old root. In fact, however, the root and top may be considered, in a way, to
be of the same age, particularly if only a piece of the root is employed, for
the cion grew on its parent tree the same year the root was growing in the
nursery.

The tree grew from the seed but it is no longer a "seedling"
or a "natural;" it is now a grafted tree, destined to produce
a named recognized variety of apple, maybe York
Imperial, maybe Jonathan. We find seedling trees in old
fields, in fence-rows, and in woods. These have grown
from scattered seeds and have come to fruit without the
arts of the propagator. They bear their own tops or heads,
rather than the heads that a thrifty horticulturist would
have put on them. Now and then such a tree produces
superior fruit; then a discriminating pomologist discovers
it, names it a new variety, and propagates it as other
varieties are propagated. Thus have most of the prized
varieties originated, without knowledge on the part of man
of the ultimate processes. But now with the accumulating
16. The knowledge of the plant-breeder we hope to be able to
whip-graft foresee and probably to produce varieties of given
before tying. qualities.
Bud-grafting is practiced in
summer. The young trees, obtained from the grower
of apple stocks, are planted regularly in nursery
rows in spring, the top having been cut back to the
crown so that a strong vigorous shoot will arise. In
July and August or September, when this shoot is
the size of a lead pencil and larger and the bark will
peel (or separate from the wood), a single bud is
inserted near the ground (Fig. 17). This bud is deftly
cut from the current year's growth of the desired
variety; it grows in the axil of a leaf (Fig. 15). The
leaf is removed but a small part of the stalk or
petiole is retained with the bud to serve as a handle.
A boat-shaped or shield-shaped piece of bark is
removed with the bud. This piece, known 17. A "bud" before
technically as a "bud," is inserted in an incision on tying.
the stock, so that it slips underneath the bark and
next the wood, with only the bud itself showing in the slit; it is then tied in
place.

The stock on which the bud is inserted has a two-year root, and the root is
entire. For this reason, budded trees are usually very large and strong for
their age when compared with piece-root trees grown under similar
conditions of climate, tillage and soil.
The bud does not grow the year it is inserted in the stock; it is dormant until
the following spring, as it would have been had it remained on its parent
branch; but soon after it is inserted it attaches itself fast to the stock: it is a
bud implanted from one twig to another. The following spring, if the
operation is successful, the bud "grows," sending up a strong shoot that
makes the trunk of the future tree. The top of the stock is cut away; in the
merchantable tree, the bend or place may be seen where the stock and cion
meet.
As in the case of cion-grafting, we now have a top of a known variety
growing on the root of an unknown kind. The tree is sold at two or three
years, counting the age of the top; and of course the tree is no longer called
a seedling, and it produces its implanted variety as accurately as does the
cion-grafted tree. Equally good trees are produced by both cion-grafting and
bud-grafting.
The apple-tree is now "propagated," and is ready for the planting. Great
hopes will be built on it, and the tree will probably do its part to justify
them. Nobody knows how a bud from a Baldwin tree holds the memory of a
Baldwin or from a Winesap tree the memory of a Winesap. Neither does
anyone know why of two seeds that look alike one will unerringly produce
a cabbage and the other a cauliflower. So accustomed are we to these results
that we never challenge a twig of apple or a seed of cabbage: we assume
that the twig or the seed "knows." Nor have we yet approached this question
in our elaborate studies of plant-breeding. Here is one of the mysteries that
baffles the skill of the physiologist and chemist, yet it is a mystery so very
common that we know it not, albeit the life on the planet would otherwise
be utter confusion.

IX

THE DWARF APPLE-TREE
We have learned that many kinds of apples and apple-trees may come from
a batch of seeds. Differences are expressed in the tree as well as in the fruit.
In fact, stature is usually one of the characteristics of the variety. Here I
open Downing's great book, "The Fruits and Fruit-Trees of America," and
find the description of a certain variety beginning: "Tree while young very
slow in its growth, but makes a compact well-formed head in the orchard,"
and another: "Tree vigorous, upright spreading, and productive." We know
the small stature and early bearing of the Wagener (wherefore it is often
planted in the orchard as a filler), and the great wide-spreading head of the
Tompkins King with the apples scattered through the tree.
Now it so happens that in the course of time certain great races of the apple-
tree have arisen, we do not know just why or how. There is the race or
family of the russets and of the Fameuse. So are there several races very
small in stature, remaining perhaps no larger than bushes. If we were to
propagate any of the ordinary apples on such diminutive stocks, we should
have a "dwarf apple-tree."
The dwarf apple, then, is not a question of variety but of stock. Any variety
may be grown as a dwarf by grafting it on a plant that naturally remains
small, although some varieties are more adaptable than others to the
purpose.
If seeds of the natural diminutive apple-tree are sown, a variety of trees and
apples may be expected. The fruits would probably be inferior. Probably the
stature would vary between different seedlings. If we are to get the effect of
dwarfness, we must be sure that the stock is itself really dwarf. Therefore,
to eliminate variation and also because seeds of natural dwarf apples may
not be had in sufficient quantity, the stocks are propagated by layers rather
than by seeds.
The diminutive tree, when well established, is cut off near the ground.
Sprouts arise. Some kinds sucker very freely. If earth is mounded up around
the sprouts, roots form on them and the sprouts may be removed and treated

as if they were seedling stocks. Usually the mounding is not performed until
the shoots have made one season's growth. Gooseberries and some other
plants are often propagated by mound-layers. In the case of the gooseberry,
however, it is desired that the layer reproduce the parent—it may be
Downing or Whitesmith—and therefore it is planted without further
manipulation. But in the case of the apple, we do not want the layer to
reproduce the parent, for the parent would probably bear an inferior fruit
since it does not represent an "improved" or recognized variety; therefore
the layer is grafted or budded with the particular variety we desire to grow
as a dwarf tree.
Dwarf trees are grown in America, if at all, only in gardens, where extra
attention may be given them. Only high-class kinds should be attempted on
dwarfs, for the quantity-production of commercial apples must be obtained
by less intensive methods on cheaper lands.
Better fruits often are grown on dwarf than on standards, for two reasons: It
is usual to propagate only the best varieties on dwarf stock; the little tree
must receive extra care in pruning and in every other way. Its bushel of
apples must be choice, every one, to make the effort of growing the tree
worth the while. Under European conditions where land is high-priced and
labor has been relatively cheap, it is possible (and common) to raise apples
on dwarfs for market, as it is profitable to terrace the hillsides with human
labor; but in North America the conditions are practically the reverse and
the dwarf tree cannot compete with the standard orchard tree.
The growing of a dwarf tree is essentially a gardening practice. It requires
great skill. The spurs are produced and protected to a nicety. Every fruit
may be the separate product of handwork. The fertilizing, mulching,
watering, are carefully regulated for every tree. Often the trees are trained
on cordons, espaliers, trellises or walls. The individual fruits may be tied up
or bagged. All this is very different from the raising of apples by means of
tractors and other machinery, gangs of pruners and pickers, broadside
extensive methods, with highly organized systems of handling and
marketing, in all of which the money-measure is the chief consideration. It
is for all these reasons that the growing of a few dwarf apple-trees may
afford such intimate satisfaction to a careful man who prizes the result of
his skill.

The dwarfs are grown as little trees branching near the ground, headed in at
top and side and kept within shape and bounds. If they are of the dwarfest
dwarfs and not trained on trellis or wall (as they usually are not in
America), the fruit may be gathered by a man standing on the ground, even
from old trees. The dwarfs are planted eight to ten feet apart when grown in
regular plantation.
Be it said that certain kinds of stocks produce trees only semi-dwarf; and in
all cases if the tree is planted so deep that roots strike from the cion, the top
will probably outgrow the stock, being supplied in part or even entirely by
its own roots.
This brings us to a consideration of some of the kinds of dwarf stocks, or
dwarf races of the apple-tree. Be it said, in understanding of the subject,
that there are naturally dwarf forms of many plants, and probably all
ordinary plants are capable of producing them. Thus there are very compact
condensed forms of arbor-vitae, Norway spruce, peach-tree. These have
originated as seed sports and are multiplied by cuttings. So are there dwarf
tomatoes, dwarf China asters, dwarf sweet peas, all coming more or less
true from seeds, for these species (of short generations) have been bred to
reproduce their variations. The inquirer must not suppose, therefore, that the
races of dwarf apple-trees are an anomally in the vegetable kingdom.
It is customary to speak of two classes or races of dwarf apple-trees, the
Paradise and the Doucin. The former kinds are the smaller, the trees on their
own roots sometimes reaching not more than four feet in height at full
bearing maturity. On the Paradise stocks, the grafted apple-tree is very
small; it is a true dwarf. The Doucin trees are by nature larger, and apples
grafted on them make semi-dwarf trees, midway in stature between the real
dwarfs and the common standard or "free" apple-trees.
The case is not so simple, however, as this brief statement would make it
appear. There are many kinds of Paradise stock, as also of Doucin. If one
were to bring together living plants of all the kinds of natural dwarfs and
semi-dwarfs that could be found in nurseries and growing collections, one
would undoubtedly find a nearly complete series, so far as stature of tree is
concerned, from the very dwarf to the full-sized standard tree. To say that a
person is growing grafted dwarf apple-trees does not signify how large the

trees may be expected to grow, for one may not know the particular kind of
stocks on which the variety is grafted. In fact, it is considered even in
Europe, where dwarf apples are chiefly grown, that the proper identification
of dwarf stocks is still a subject for careful investigation.
When the Paradise dwarfs first came into existence is undetermined. They
appear to have been known in the Middle Ages. The many races, as the
Dutch, French, Metz, Nonsuch, Broad-leaved, indicate an ancient origin.
We cannot be too certain what apple-trees were meant in the early
references to the Paradise apple. The fruits of the present natural Paradise
apple-trees are not sufficiently attractive to justify us in considering them
the "Tree of Paradise" or apple of the Garden of Eden, which circumstance
is supposed by some to account for the name. "Paradise" was originally a
park or pleasure ground, applied also to the Garden of Eden, and later to
horticultural gardens. John Parkinson wrote his great treatise on
horticulture, 1629, under the title, "Paradisi in Sole Paradisus terrestris; or, a
Choice Garden of all Sorts of Rarest Flowers, etc." Now we use the word
for gardens of bliss.
The word Doucin, from the Italian, is supposed originally to have
designated apples of sweet flavor, but it now applies technically to a class
or race of semi-dwarf apple-trees.
For the purpose of this little book, however, the interest in the dwarf apple
centers not so much in the origin of the stock as in the natural-history of the
tree itself and the good skill of hand and heart that one may expend in the
growing of it. If one would come close to a plant, knowing it intimately in
every season, causing it to respond to sympathetic treatment through a
series of years, then a garden collection of dwarf apples may satisfy the
desire. It is too bad that we do not have time to cultivate the dwarfs often in
the yards and gardens of North America. We are more familiar with the
raising of dwarf pears (which are grafted on quince stocks since there is no
similar race of natural dwarf pear-tree), but we do not give them the thumb-
and-finger care that is demanded for the choicest results. The abundance of
apples in the market should only stimulate the desire of the connoisseur to
have trees and fruits that are wholly personal. The market produce can
never gratify the affections.

X

WHENCE COMES THE APPLE-TREE?
If the dwarf apple-tree goes back to the Middle Ages and perhaps farther,
then whence comes the apple originally? No one can surely answer.
Carbonized apples are found in the remains of the prehistoric lake dwellings
of Switzerland. When recorded history begins, apples were well known and
widely distributed. The apple-tree is wild in many parts of Europe, but it is
difficult to determine whether, in a given region, it is indigenous or has run
wild from cultivation. Wild apple-trees are common in North America, but
no one supposes that the orchard apple is native here.
Expert opinion generally considers that the apple is native in the region of
the Caspian Sea and probably in southeastern Europe. Perhaps it had spread
westward before the Aryan migrations. It had also probably spread
eastward, but it is not a cultivated fruit in China and Japan except
apparently as introduced in recent time. The apple is essentially a fruit of
central and northern Europe, and of European migration and settlement.
It is a fertile retrospect to conceive of the apple as an attendant of the course
of Western civilization. Without voice and leaving no record, it has
nevertheless followed man in his wanderings, encouraged his attainment of
permanent habitations, succored him in his emergencies. What the apple has
contributed to sustenance can never be known, but we are aware that it
yields its fruit abundantly, that it thrives in widely unlike regions and
conditions, that the tree has the ruggedness to endure severe climates and to
provide food that can be stored and transported. In the ages it must have
stood guard at many a rude camp and fireside. It would be fascinating to
know what the apple-tree has witnessed.
These early apples must have been very crude fruits measured by the
produce of the present day. But other food was crude and man was crude.
The North American Indians found the apple to be worth their effort;
remains of some of the so-called Indian orchards of the Five Nations in
New York persisted until the present generation. These were seedling apple-
trees, grown from the stocks introduced by the white man. The French

missionaries are said to have carried the apple far into the interior, and early
settlers took seeds with them. The legends and records of Johnny
Appleseed, sowing the seeds as he went, are still familiar. My father, like
other pioneers, took seeds from the old New England trees into the
wilderness of the West; the resulting trees were top-grafted, some of them
as late as my time; I can remember the apples some of these seedling trees
bore, the like of which I have never seen again, probably poor apples if we
had them in this day but to a boy at the edge of the forest the very essence
of goodness. As early as 1639, apples had been picked from trees planted on
Governor's Island in Boston harbor. Governor John Endicott of
Massachusetts Colony had an apple-tree nursery in the early day; in 1644
he says that five hundred of his trees were destroyed by fire. So the apple
came early to be a standby on the new continent.
The apples of the colonists were not all for eating, but for drinking. The
butts and barrels of cider put in cellars in the early times seem to us most
surprising. Herein are suggestions of old social customs that might lead us
into interesting historical excursions. The oldest book I possess on the apple
is "Vinetum Britannicum: or, a Treatise of Cider," published in London in
1676; it treats also of other beverages made from fruits and of "the newly-
invented ingenio or mill, for the more expeditious and better making of
cider." The gradual change in customs, whereby the eating of the apple
(rather than the drinking of it) has come to be paramount, is a significant
development; the use of apple-juice may now proceed on another basis, on
the principle of preservation and pasteurization rather than of fermentation.
It is the custom to call the apple Pyrus Malus. This is the name given by the
great Linnaeus, with whom the modern accurate naming of plants and
animals begins. The nomenclature of plants starts with his "Species
Plantarum," 1753. Pyrus is the genus or group comprising the pears and
apples, and Linnaeus included the quince; Malus is Latin for the apple-tree.
Together the names represent genus and species,—the malus Pyrus.
These statements are easy enough to make, but it is impossible to
demonstrate whether the common pomological apples are derived from one
original species or from two or more. Many technical botanical names have
been given in the group, but we need not pause with them here. It is enough
for our purpose to know that the natural-history of the apple, as of anything

else that runs to time immemorial, passes at the end into obscurity. We seem
never to reach the ultimate origins or to find an end to our quests.
There are other apples than the common pomological orchard types. There
are the crabs. In general usage, the word "crab" designates an apple that is
small, sour and crabbed. Such apples are wildings or seedlings. They are
merely depreciated forms of Pyrus Malus, and probably much like the first
apples known to man. What are known to horticulturists as crab-apples,
however, are other species of Pyrus, of different character and origin. We
need not pause with the discussion of them, except to say that the
commonest kinds are the little long-stemmed fruits of Pyrus baccata (berry
Pyrus), native in eastern Europe and Siberia. These are the "Siberian crabs."
The leaves and twigs are smooth, and the calyx falls away from the fruit,
leaving a bare blossom end. These little hard handsome fruits are used in
the making of conserves. Certain larger crab-apples, in which the blossom
end is not clean or bare, as the Transcendent and Hyslop, are probably
hybrids between the true crabs and the common apple; this class provides
the main crab-apples of the markets.
When the settlers came to the country west and south of New England, they
found another kind of crab-apples in the woods, truly native. The fruits
were hard and sour, but they could be buried to ripen. The trees are much
like a thorn-apple,—low, spreading, twiggy, thorny; but the pink-white
large fragrant flowers are very different. The wild crab-apple was called
Pyrus coronaria by Linnaeus, the "garland Pyrus." On the prairies is
another species, Pyrus ioensis; it yields a charming double-flowered form,
"Bechtel's crab." In the South are other species. In fact, P. coronaria itself
may not be a single species. These wild crabs run into many forms. In the
northern Mississippi and prairie country are native apples good enough to
be introduced into cultivation under varietal names. These are Pyrus
Soulardii, a species bearing the name of J. G. Soulard, Illinois horticulturist.
These crab-apples are probably natural hybrids between Pyrus Malus and
the prairie crab, P. ioensis. Had there been no European apple to be
introduced by colonists, it is probable that improved forms would have been
evolved from the native species. In that event, North American pomology
would have had a very different character.

There remains a very different class of apple-trees, grown only for
ornament and usually known as "flowering apples." They are mostly native
in China and Japan. They are small trees, or even almost bushes, with
profuse handsome flowers and some of them with very ornamental little
fruits. They have come to this country largely from Japan where they are
grown for decoration, as the cherries of Japan are grown not for fruit but for
their flowers, being of very different species from the cherries of Europe
and America. The common apple itself yields varieties grown only for
ornament, as one with variegated leaves, one with double flowers, and one
with drooping branches. These are known mostly in Europe; but these
forms do not compare in interest with the handsome species of the Far East.
All these differing species of the apple-tree multiply the interest and hold
the attention in many countries. They make the apple-tree group one of the
most widespread and adaptable of temperate-region trees. It will be seen
that there are three families of them,—the Eurasian family, from which
come the pomological apples; the North American family, which has
yielded little cultivated material; the East-Asian family, abundant in highly
ornamental kinds. There are no apple-trees native in the southern
hemisphere.
The apple-tree, taken in its general sense, has a broad meaning. What may
be accomplished by breeding and hybridizing is beyond imagination.

XI

THE VARIETIES OF APPLE
Every seedling of the pomological apples is a new variety. Some of these
seedlings are so good that they are named and introduced into cultivation.
They are grafted on other stocks, and become part of the great inheritance
of desirable apples.
It is to be expected that in the long processes of time in many countries the
number of varieties will accumulate to high numbers. No one knows all the
kinds that have been named and propagated, but they run into many
thousands. No one book contains them all, although some of the manuals
are voluminous. Varieties drop out of existence, being no longer
propagated; new varieties come in.
So the lists of varieties gradually change. A list of one hundred years ago
would contain many names strange to us. Thus, of the sixty apples in "A
Select List of Fruit-Trees" by Bernard M'Mahon, published in "The
American Gardener's Calendar," in 1806, not more than six or eight would
be understandable to a planter of the present day.
With the standardizing of practices in the commercial growing of fruits, the
tendency is to reduce the number of varieties to small proportions; it is
these varieties that the nurserymen propagate. Here and there over the
country are still trees of the extra-quality but uncommercial varieties known
to a former generation. If the amateur now wants to grow these varieties, he
must find cions as best he can by patient correspondence, and graft them on
his own trees. When I planted an orchard twenty-five years ago, I found
cions of Jefferis here, of Dyer there, of Mother, Swaar and Chenango in
other places.
In the enlarged edition of Downing's "Fruits and Fruit-Trees of America,"
1872, are descriptions of 1856 varieties, of which 1099 are American in
origin, 585 foreign, 172 of origin unknown. The lists are not only much
smaller in these days, but the foreign element tends to pass out. With the
introduction of the Russian apples for the cold North in the latter part of the
past century, the importation of foreign varieties practically ceased, as it

ceased also for the pears at an earlier date with the introductions of
Manning, Wilder and others. The epoch of the "testing" of varieties passed
away, and with it has gone an appreciative attitude toward fruits and even
toward life that constitutes a sad lack in our day.
About thirty years ago (1892) I compiled an inventory of all the varieties of
apple-trees sold in North America, as listed in the ninety-five nurserymen's
catalogues that came to my hand. The inventory contains 878 varieties. In
the present year, however, perhaps not more than 100 varieties are handled
by nurserymen in Eastern United States. Probably the dealer and grower
would consider even this small number much too great. The highly
developed standardized business of the present day, aiming at quantity-
production, naturally reduces the variety of products, whether in
manufacturing or horticulture, and aims at uniformity. Under the influence
of this leadership, we are losing many of the old products, varieties of
apples among the rest.
Why do we need so many kinds of apples? Because there are so many folks.
A person has a right to gratify his legitimate tastes. If he wants twenty or
forty kinds of apples for his personal use, running from Early Harvest to
Roxbury Russet, he should be accorded the privilege. Some place should be
provided where he may obtain trees or cions. There is merit in variety itself.
It provides more points of contact with life, and leads away from uniformity
and monotony.
The leading varieties of apples, that have become dominant over wide
regions, have been great benefactors to man. The original tree should be
carefully preserved till the last, by historical or other societies; and then a
monument should be placed at the spot. Monuments have been erected to
the Baldwin, Northern Spy, McIntosh and other apples. We should never
lose our touch with the origins of men, events, notable achievements,
outstanding products of nature.
I fear it is now a habit with many fruit-growers to minimize the interest in
varieties, placing the emphasis on tillage, spraying and management of
plantations. Yet, the only reason why we expend all the labor is that we may
grow a given kind of apple; the variety is the final purpose.

In this little book we cannot discuss varieties at length. There are special
books on this fascinating subject. But we may have before us a compiled
list by way of interesting suggestion. The list is sorted from the Catalogue
of Fruits of the American Pomological Society, 1901, the last year in which
the catalogue was published with quality rated on a scale of 10. On such a
scale, Ben Davis ranks 4-5; Baldwin, 5-6; Wealthy and York Imperial, 6-7;
Rhode Island Greening, 7-8; Northern Spy, 8-9; Yellow Newtown
(Albermarle Pippin) 9-10. There is no apple in the entire catalogue of 324
kinds (not including crab-apples) rated wholly lower than 4 in quality
except one alone and this is grown for cider only, although several varieties
of minor importance bear the marks 3-4. Only two varieties are rated
exclusively 10, the Garden Royal, a Massachusetts summer-fall apple, little
known to planters, and the familiar Esopus Spitzenberg. Of course
judgments differ widely in these matters, as there are no inflexible criteria
for the scoring of quality; yet this extensive list is probably our soundest
approach to the subject.
The varieties in the catalogue of the American Pomological Society are
starred if "known to succeed in a given district" and double-starred "if
highly successful." North America is thrown into nineteen districts for the
purposes of this catalogue (which comprises other fruits besides apples).
For our purposes we may combine them into six more or less indefinite
great regions: n. e., the northeastern part of the country, Delaware and
Pennsylvania to eastern Canada; s. e., the parts south of this area and mostly
east of the Mississippi; n. c., north central, from Kansas and Missouri north;
s. w., Texas to Arizona; mt., the mountain states of the Rockies west to the
Sierras, including of course much high plains country; pac., the Pacific
slope, Washington to southern California.
Of the varieties starred and double-starred in these various geographical
regions there are 107; these are listed herewith. Of course the intervening
twenty years might change the rating of some of these apples, other
varieties have come to the front, and certain ones of these older worthies are
receding still further into the background; but the exhibit is suggestive none
the less.
Arkansas—n.e., s.e., n.c., s.w., mt.
Bailey (Sweet)—n.e., s.e., n.c., mt.

Baker—n.e.
Baldwin—n.e., s.e., n.c., mt., s.w., pac.
Beach—s.e.
Belle Bonne—n.e.
Ben Davis—n.e., s.e., n.c., s.w., mt., pac.
Bietigheimer—n.e., s.e., n.c., mt.
Bledsoe—s.e.
Blenheim—n.e., n.c.
Blue Pearmain—n.e., s.e., n.c., mt.
Bough, Sweet—n.e., s.e., n.c., mt.
Bryan—s.e., mt.
Buckingham—n.e., s.e., n.c.
Canada Reinette—n.e., n.c., mt.
Clayton—n.e., s.e., n.c., mt.
Clyde—n.e., n.c.
Cogswell—n.e.
Cooper—n.e., s.e., n.c., mt.
Cracking—s.e., n.c.
Doyle—s.e.
Early Pennock—n.e., s.e., n.c., mt.
Esopus (Spitzenburg)—n.e., s.e., n.c., mt., pac.
Ewalt—n.e., s.e., mt.
Fallawater—n.e., s.e., n.c., mt.
Fall Harvey—n.e., mt.
Fall Jenneting—n.e., s.e., n.c., mt.
Fall Orange—n.e., s.e., n.c.
Fall Pippin—n.e., s.e., n.c., s.w., mt.
Fanny—n.e., s.e., n.c., s.w.
Farrar—s.e.
Foundling—n.e.
Gano—n.e., s.e., n.c., s.w., mt.
Gilbert—s.e.
Golding—n.e., s.e., n.c., mt.
Gravenstein—n.e., s.e., n.c., mt., s.w., pac.
Hagloe—n.e., s.e.
Hoover—s.e., n.c., mt., pac.
Hopewell—n.c.

Horse—n.e., s.e., n.c.
Hubbardston—n.e., s.e., n.c., s.w.
Hunge—s.e.
Huntsman—s.e., n.c., s.w., mt.
Isham (Sweet)—n.c.
Jacobs Sweet—n.e.
Kent—n.e., s.e., n.c.
Kernodle—s.e.
Lady Sweet—n.e., mt.
Lankford—n.e., s.e.
Lawver—n.e., s.e., n.c., mt.
Lilly (of Kent)—n.e.
Lowe—s.e.
Lowell—n.e., s.e., n.c., mt.
McAfee—n.e., s.e, mt.
McCuller—s.e.
McMahon—n.e., n.c., mt.
Magog—n.e.
Maverack—s.e.
Milwaukee—n.c.
Minister—n.e., s.e., n.c.
Monmouth—s.e., n.c., mt.
Newell—n.c.
Nickajack—n.e., s.e., n.c., mt.
Northern Spy—n.e., s.e., n.c., mt., pac.
Northwestern (Greening)—n.e., n.c., mt.
Oconee—n.e., s.e.
Ohio Nonpareil—n.e., s.e.
Ohio Pippin—n.e., s.e., n.c.
Ortley—n.e., s.e., n.c., mt.
Paragon—n.e., s.e., n.c., mt.
Patten (Greening)—n.c.
Pease—n.e.
Peck (Pleasant)—n.e., s.e., n.c., mt.
Peter—n.c.
Pewaukee—n.e., s.e., n.c., mt.
Porter—n.e., s.e., n.c., mt.

Pumpkin Sweet—n.e., s.e., n.c.
Quince—n.e., n.c.
Ramsdell (Sweet)—n.e., s.e., n.c., mt.
Red Astrachan—n.e., s.e., n.c., s.w., mt., pac.
Rhode Island (Greening)—n.e., s.e., n.c., s.w., mt., pac.
Ridge (Pippin)—n.e.
Rolfe—n.e.
Rome—n.e., s.e., n.c., s.w., mt.
Stark—n.e., s.e., n.c., s.w., mt.
Starkey—n.e., s.e.
Stayman Winesap—n.e., s.e., n.c.
Sterling—n.e., n.c.
Summer King—n.e., s.e.
Swaar—n.e., n.c., mt., pac.
Taunton—s.e.
Titovka—n.e., mt.
Tompkins King—n.e., s.e., mt., pac.
Twenty Ounce—n.e., s.e., s.w., mt.
Utter—n.c.
Vanhoy—n.e., s.e.
Virginia Greening—s.e., mt.
Washington (Strawberry)—n.e., s.e., mt.
Watson—s.e.
White Pippin—n.e., s.e., n.c., mt., pac.
Wine—n.e., s.e., n.c., mt.
Wistal—s.e., s.w.
Wolf River—n.e., s.e., n.c., mt.
Yellow Bellflower—n.e., s.e., s.w., mt., pac.
Yellow Newtown—n.e., s.e., n.c., s.w., mt., pac.
Yopp—s.e.
York Imperial—n.e., s.e., n.c., s.w., mt.
There are many odd varieties of apple not found in any list but about which
questions are likely to arise. One of these is the Sweet-and-Sour. There is an
old ribbed variety of this name, the ribs having an acid flesh and the
furrows sweetish; it is little known and of no special value. Apples are
sometimes found that are sweetish on one side and sourish on the other. The

reasons for this kind of variation are no more understood than are those
responsible for variance in color or shape or durability. One yet sometimes
hears the pleasant fable that sweet-and-sour apples are produced by splitting
the bud when the tree was propagated.
The Surprise is a small whitish apple with light red flesh. It is indeed a
surprise to bite into such an apple, but it has little merit. It is an early winter
variety.
One is frequently asked about the Sheepnose apple, particularly by older
people who remember it from early days and who deplore its infrequency in
these latter times. The sheepnose shape—long-conical—is an infrequent
variation, as apples go, and apparently none of these forms chances to have
sufficient merit to keep it in the lists. The name is often applied to the Black
Gilliflower, an old apple more than three inches long, dark red, of light
weight perhaps because of the large core, ripening late in autumn to
midwinter. It seems to be specially prized by children, perhaps in part
because of its unusual shape and in part by its aromatic fragrance; but it is
not a high-class apple, and is now little seen. With the Rambo, Vandevere,
some of the russets, Early Harvest, Jersey Sweet and other old worthies, it
probably will pass away unless rescued here and there by the amateur. To
the lover of choice fruit nothing is old; every succeeding crop is as choice
and new as is the new year itself, and one waits for it again and again.
One hears of seedless and no-core apples, as also of pears. The core is
present but greatly reduced in size, and the seeds may be few and small. I
have also raised practically seedless tomatoes. All these are infrequent
variations that may be propagated by asexual parts (cuttings, cions), but as
yet none of them has any outstanding value.
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 associated 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 diœcious pyrus, sexes
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, finishing 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 passing.
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 quantity-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. Quantity-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 anticipation, 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 associated 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 pass 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.
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
18. The cleft-graft. 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.

19. The cleft-graft after waxing.

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 grass; 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 classes,—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.
With some experience, the cultivator soon learns to make many deft
applications of ingrafting. Sometimes a piece of bark may be used as a
patch. In the bracing of crotches in young trees, the two trunks may be
joined by uniting a small branch from either one, twisting them together to
form a bridge like a bolt; they can be made to grow together, forming a
solid union. Bolting the parts with iron rods, or holding them together by
means of chains, is the usual and commonly the better method. The iron is
not to go around a limb, however, for girdling results; the rods or chains
should be secured by bolts bored through the wood and pulling against large
heads or washers.
The usual repairs are easily made. When trees are badly injured, and
particularly when the tree is low in vitality, it may not be worth while to
engage in surgery. It may be better to plant a new tree. Saving very old trees
by the mending processes is not likely to be satisfactory. The grower should
transfer his affection to a young tree. If the tree has had good care
throughout its life, it probably will not need much surgery in old age. The
grower will be willing, when the time comes, to take a photograph for
memory's sake and to let the tree come to a timely and artistic end.

XIV

CITIZENS OF THE APPLE-TREE
Many years ago, my old friend, the late Dr. J. A. Lintner, State
Entomologist of New York, compiled a list of 356 insects that feed on the
apple-tree. Later authorities place the number at nearly five hundred
species. It must be a good plant that has such a host of denizens. The
number of fungi is also large; and the tree often supports lichens, algæ, and
other forms of life.
The apple-tree is not single in its denizens. No plant lives alone. It has
association with its fellows, perhaps contest for space and nourishment. It
provides habitat for many organisms, many of which live on its bounty. I
have never seen a bearing apple-tree that was not a colonizing place for
other living things. We accept these things as matters of course, as being in
place, living their part in nature. Therefore, one cannot understand the
apple-tree unless one knows something of its citizenry.
Probably the most prominent citizen of the apple-tree is the codlin-moth. Its
larva is the apple-worm, the one that makes "wormy apples," the burrows
going to the core and out again. The insect is native in Europe, but has been
known in North America nearly two hundred years, and is widespread in the
apple countries of the world.
If one has screens in the apple cellar, one is likely to find small moths on
them in the spring, larger than a clothes moth, about three-fourths inch in
spread of the soft gray watered-silk wings. This is the imago or mature form
of the insect known as the codlin-moth (it lives on codlins or apples). The
larvæ or "worms" were brought into the cellar in the apples; some of them
crawled out, spun themselves in a cocoon and pupated; in due season the
moth emerged, ready to lay the eggs for other larvæ. Ordinarily the fruit-
grower does not see the moth, for it is a small object amidst the foliage of
apple-trees; the larva or apple-worm he knows well.
There may be two or more broods of apple-worms, depending on the length
of the season. In the northern apple regions of North America there is
usually only one brood, with a partial second brood. The first brood is

hatched from eggs laid by moths that emerge in spring. The moths come
from larvæ that have lain in cocoons all winter, hidden under bark on the
trunks and main branches of the apple-tree, in crevices in nearby posts and
fences, and sometimes in the ground. The pupæ are the transformed larvæ
or worms that left the apple of the previous year, usually before it fell, and
crawled down the tree to find a place to spin the silken brown cocoons in
which they wrapped themselves to undergo the wonderful transformation.
So is the cycle complete: egg laid in early spring, mostly on the leaves;
larva hatched in about one week, crawling to the young apple to feed, where
it lives for perhaps a month; larva departed from the fruit to form a cocoon
and to remain quiescent till it pupates the following spring (if there is no
second brood) when it transforms into a moth; the moth alive for one week
or ten days, laying perhaps as many as one hundred eggs or even more. If
there is a second or third brood, the pupa resurrects in ten days or so into
the moth; eggs are laid; larvæ are hatched; pupæ again are formed; and thus
is the process continued. But the winter stage is the larva, although perhaps
in store-houses the moths may emerge earlier and survive till spring.
The eggs of the first brood are commonly laid on the leaves and fruit. The
young larva or worm eats very little on the foliage. It usually crawls into the
blossom end of the apple. The young apple stands erect, with the calyx open
(Fig. 6); later the calyx closes and protects the larva that hatched there,
forming a good cover for its operations (Fig. 7). The worm drives for the
core, where it eats the young seeds and burrows extensively; then, when
nearly grown, it sets out for the surface, eating a straight burrow; an
opening is made through the skin of the apple, but this exit is plugged until
the animal is ready to leave the place and to crawl down the tree to pupate.
The larvæ of later broods may enter at the side of the apple, where a leaf
affords protection or where two fruits come together; but the life-history is
the same, varying in its rapidity.
This account discloses the vulnerable point in the life-history, if one is to
destroy the insects and to grow fair fruit; if poison is lodged on the erect
open-topped little apple, the young larva will get it before he injures the
fruit. If the application of the poison is delayed until the calyx closes (Fig.
7), there will be small chance of reaching the worm. The best way to reach
the second brood is to destroy all the first brood. The standard practice,

therefore, is to spray the trees soon after the petals fall, with the idea of
depositing arsenic in the blossom end.
But the season of egg-laying is long, often extending over a period of three
or four weeks, for the moths do not all emerge from the cocoons
simultaneously. It is customary, therefore, to spray again about two weeks
after the first application, with the hope of catching the young worms on
their way to the fruit.
There is no question about the efficacy of spraying. Its value has been
demonstrated time and again. The methods and the materials may be
learned from the experiment station publications in any State, wherein the
advice is kept up-to-date.
In the days before the perfecting of the spraying processes, the codlin-moth
was controlled by catching the pupating larvæ. Taking advantage of the
habit of the worm to find lodgment under the bark on the trunk, it was the
practice to scrape the loose bark from bole and large branches to destroy the
hiding-places and then to tie a band of cloth around the trunk. Under this
band the worms were taken, as they spun themselves up in the cocoons.
This is a lesson taken from the industrious woodpeckers, who, in the winter,
search the trees for the pupæ and make holes through the flakes of bark to
get them. The scraping of apple-trees is not much recommended now for
the reason that this special necessity is passed, and because the better tillage
and care together with the soaking of the branches and trunk in the spraying
operation, tend to keep the tree vigorous and the bark properly exfoliated.
So the worm in the apple has a delicate and interesting history. From egg to
imago the transformations proceed with regularity, and they are marvelous.
Had we not traced the sequence, no man could tell by appearances that the
larva, the pupa and the moth are one and the same animal. They seem to
have nothing in common. So is the egg stage as different as the other three,
but we are measurably prepared for this epoch, since we know seeds so
well; the egg and the seed are analogous. That a moth in the air should
come from a crawling worm in an apple is indeed one of the miracles of
nature. The worm leaves the apple ere it falls; how the worm knows the
time is again a mystery. By some instinct, it is able to cognize a dying
apple. The later worms, either the lastlings from the early brood or the

product of subsequent broods, may remain in the apple when it is harvested,
particularly in an apple picked before it is quite mature and from which the
worm has not escaped.
The apple-worm ruins the crop by killing many of the fruits and by
blemishing the remainder. Seldom are there two worms in an apple. They
seem to respect each other's hunting-ground. From the worm's point of view
and from man's, one is enough.
If man has dominion and if he needs apples, then is he within his rights if he
joins issue with the insects. Yet is the insect as interesting for all that. I
think we should miss many of the satisfactions of life, and certainly some of
the disciplines, if there were no insects. My apple-tree is a great place for a
naturalist. Van Bruyssel wrote a book on "The Population of an Old Pear-
Tree." "When certain blue spirits begin to flit about me," he writes, "I depart
from my study to go and read, in what I am allowed, even by my clerical
uncle, to call my book of devotions. The devotions I mean are not in my
book-case. No publisher, if he ever thought of such a thing, could bring
them out. They are a page of the book of Nature, opened in the country,
under blue sky, displayed at all season." What a marvelous company Van
Bruyssel found on his old pear tree; and what inexhaustible worlds did
Fabre discover in the lives of the spider, the fly, the caterpillar, the wasps,
the mason-bees and others!
Therefore we need not pause with the other four hundred and more insect
citizens of the apple-tree. Some of them, as the San José scale, are not
peculiarly apple-tree insects. My tree has another crew of inhabitants, and
to this company we may now have introduction.
The spots on the leaves and fruits are not deposits of dirt nor are they
caused by mysterious conditions in the atmosphere, as once supposed, nor
is it in the nature of leaves to be spotted and of fruits to be scabby; nor are
the one-sided dwarfed fruits merely accidents. The organism responsible for
these blemishes is less evident than the codlin-moth; yet what fruit-grower
knows the eggs of the codlin-moth? But the organisms are as definite as are
the insects; no longer are the fungi things without form and without positive
cycles.

On the ground are apple leaves, shed in the autumn. On the leaves are spots
or lesions,—injured or "diseased"—infected with the apple-scab fungus.
Under a good microscope the investigator finds immature fruiting bodies in
these areas. In the early days of Spring, these bodies or winter-spores
mature. A rain discharges them in astonishing numbers. Rising in the air
(for they are incredibly light), these spores lodge on the unfolding leaves
and flowers of the apple, and there begin to germinate, invading the tissue.
The tissue is penetrated and killed so rapidly that the practiced eye soon
discovers a "spot." The leaf, if badly infected, may not reach full size; it
may curl; it may die and fall; the tree thereby is injured.
From the fungus in the active diseased areas, another kind of spore develops
rapidly. It is the summer-spore, which may be produced in prodigious
numbers, and being discharged carries the disease elsewhere.
All summer the process of spore-formation and distribution keeps up. If
conditions are favorable, the tree is invaded in foliage and fruit. The flower-
stems in the unfolding buds are attacked by the winter-spores and the flower
falls. The apples become spotted from the invasion of the summer-spores,
perhaps misshapen. Late infections may not show at picking time, but
develop on the fruit in storage. The affected leaves are cast in the autumn,
the winter-spores begin to form, the snows come and hide the processes, in
spring the spores mature; and so does the round of life go on and on.
There are beautiful forms in these fragile fungus threads that eat their way
into the tissues of the host. There are fascinating phenomena in the growth
and reproduction. Even so and for all that, man protects his tree by spraying
it with poison, and thereby again does he have dominion.
The spraying for apple-scab is with lime-sulfur to which may be added
arsenate of lead. This treatment, properly timed, may suffice also for the
codlin-moth. As the fungus may attack the flower-stems and kill them, so is
the first application made when the flower-buds open and the stems begin to
separate, but before the flowers expand; the operator has a period of one to
three days in which to spray. A second spraying is given just after the
blossoms fall, as for codlin-moth; if the season is wet, a third application
may be made ten to fourteen days later; if the fungus seems to spread, a
fourth spraying may be applied in midsummer. These sprayings, variously

modified, control not only the codlin-moth and the scab fungus but also
scale, blister-mite, plant-lice, leaf-roller, case-bearer, bud-moth, red-bug and
others.
In the tropics one sees trees bearing great burdens of orchids and
bromeliads and ferns and mosses, and one wonders at the strange and
exuberant population. Yet here is my apple-tree supporting epiphytes and
parasites and insects, protector and nurse of a goodly company; and birds
nest on the branches thereof.

XV

THE APPLE-TREE REGIONS
The northern hemisphere is the home of the apple, particularly Central
Europe, Canada, the United States. In certain regions in the southern
hemisphere the temperature and humidity are right for the good growing of
apples, mostly in elevated areas. In New Zealand and parts of Australia,
apple-growing is assuming large proportions. Their export trade to Europe
and parts of South America has come to be important and undoubtedly is
destined greatly to increase.
In Europe, where land is often limited and high in price, apple-trees may be
planted closer than in America, even in field conditions, and more attention
is given to pruning, heading-in, and the development of fruit-spurs in the
interior of the tree-top. I noticed this practice in New Zealand, also. In these
directions, the Europeans have much to teach us in the careful growing of
good apples. In Europe, the definite training of the apple-tree begins in the
nursery; quantity-production, with standardization, is not there the aim.
In North America the general practice is to let the tree take its course,
reaching its full natural stature. The pruning is mostly corrective, to keep
the tree in shape and to prevent the top from becoming too thick, rather than
in the development of fruiting wood. The consequence is that our trees
become very large, specially in New York and New England where they are
long-lived. In the western country, as we have learned, the apple-tree tends
to be shorter-lived and does not usually attain such great size. In the New
York apple country, orchards may be in good bearing at forty to sixty years
from planting, and individual trees may be productive much longer than
this. The trees come into good bearing in ten to fifteen years. In the irrigated
regions of the West, the trees may be expected to bear a good crop two to
five years earlier; to what age they may attain, in large plantations, it is yet
too early to state.
The commercial apple regions of North America are in Canada and the
northern United States, comprising about two or three tiers of States, with
important extensions southward into the mountains and in special parts. The

Southern States are not known as apple-growing country, except in special
restricted elevated areas, although there are considerable plantations near
the Gulf of Mexico.
The geography of apple-growing on the North American continent cannot
be better displayed than by copying the table of contents of the larger part
of Chapters III and II in Folger and Thomson's excellent recent book, "The
Commercial Apple Industry of North America:"
Commercial Apple Production in Canada
Nova Scotia
Prince Edward Island and New Brunswick
Quebec
Ontario
British Columbia.
Leading Apple Regions of the United States
Western New York
Hudson Valley
New England Baldwin belt
The Champlain district
New Jersey
Delaware
Shenandoah-Cumberland district
Piedmont district of Virginia
Minor regions in Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Virginia
Mountain region of North Carolina
Mountain region of Georgia
Ohio
Southern Ohio, Rome Beauty district
Minor regions in Ohio
Kentucky
Michigan
Illinois
Southern Illinois early apple region
Mississippi Valley region of Illinois
Ozark region

Missouri River region
Arkansas Valley of Kansas
Southeastern Illinois
Colorado
New Mexico
Utah
Montana
Washington
Yakima Valley
Wenatchee North Central Washington district
Spokane district
Walla Walla district
Oregon
Hood River Valley
Rogue River Valley
Other apple districts in Oregon
Idaho
Payette district
Boise Valley
Twin Falls
Lewiston section
California
Watsonville district
Sebastopol apple district
Yucaipa section
Wisconsin
Minnesota
The varieties of the South and the North, and largely also of the West and
the East, are prevailingly different. Canada has a set of apples quite its own.
These differences are marked when one visits exhibitions in the various
regions. Let the visitor who is a good judge of apples in Michigan and Ohio
attempt to judge them in an exhibition in the Annapolis Valley of Nova
Scotia, in the Province of Quebec, in North Carolina, in Minnesota, in
Oregon. He will be impressed with the wonderful diversity, as well as the
undeveloped resources, of the continent.

Southward, apples do not keep well. There are no true winter apples in the
Southern States, outside mountain regions. A winter apple of the North
becomes a fall apple in the South. In fact, there are marked differences in
keeping quality within a single State. On gravelly lands or warm slopes in
the southern part of New York, the Northern Spy may become practically a
late autumn apple; in the northern parts of the State it is a firm crisp all-
winter keeper. In the winter apple, the ripening process proceeds in storage.
When the season is so long that maturity is reached on the tree, the
subsequent duration is relatively short.
It is not to be inferred, however, that apples are to be grown only in regions
and soils naturally well adapted. Such adaptations should be controlling in
commercial plantations; but if man has dominion he should be able to
accomplish much in untoward or even in hostile conditions. Even the city
lot may be able to yield a harvest, if the occupant of it is minded in fruits
rather than in other things. Every observant traveler has noted cases in
which good results in the rearing of plants and animals have been attained
in places that no one would choose for the purpose: the man has overcome
his obstacles. I was impressed with this fact in visiting a greenhouse in the
Shetland Islands. Cultivation has been carried far beyond the optimum
regions. The merit of the man's performance is measured in the excellence
of his result rather than in the quantity of it. The application of skill is the
highest test of ability in plant-growing, and this is often expressed in the
most difficult places.
Whatever may be the adaptability of any general territory to the growing of
apples in a large way, the probability is that a man of resources and skill
will be able to raise good apples for himself, unless, of course, the region is
prohibitive. The amateur may be a law unto himself in many of these
matters, delighting in the ingenuity that enables him to overcome.

XVI

THE HARVEST OF THE APPLE-TREE
Finally the apple is ripe, a fair goodly object joyous in the sun, inviting to
every sense. Hanging amidst its foliage, bending the twig with its weight, it
is at once a pattern in good shape, perfect in configuration, in sheen beyond
imitation, in fragrance the very affluence of all choice clean growth, its
surface spread with a bloom often so delicate that the unsympathetic see it
not; and yet the rains do not spoil it.
The apple must be picked. Do not let it fall. Probably it is over-ripe when it
falls; the hold is loosened; its time is up. Wormy apples may fall before they
are ripe; the worm injury, if it begins early, causes them to ripen
prematurely. A premature apple is not a good apple, albeit the small boy
relishes it but only because he may get his apple earlier; in the apple season,
when ripe fruits are abundant, the boy does not choose the wormy one.
Pick the apple from the tree. It will do you good. It is ever so much better
than to pick it from a box on the market or out of a quart-can in the ice-
chest. You will feel some sense of responsibility when you pick it, some
reaction of relationship to its origin. We know that we understand folks
better when we see them at home.
In varieties that mature before winter, the apple is of best quality when it
ripens on the tree and is picked when fit to eat. In this respect it differs from
the pear. One reason why store apples are usually poor is because they must
be picked long before ripe to stand shipment. In my experience it is most
difficult to find a man who will pick apples when ripe; he is usually
possessed to pull them green, thinking that if the fruit is full grown and has
a red cheek it is therefore ready to be plucked.
One would expect the best summer and fall apples to come from nearby
local orchards, but practically this is not the case because the grower will
not allow them to remain on the tree until they are fit. Of course the really
ripe apple will not keep long and it does not stand rough handling, but this
does not affect the fact that, for eating, an apple should be naturally ripe. In
every city, small or large, a good trade can be built up for local ripe hand-

picked fruit of the first quality, in competition with the best commercial
supply.
Winter apples are picked in the Northern States in October, sometimes late
in September. They are then full grown, but are hard and inedible. The red
varieties are full colored; the green ones show more or less yellow. Light
early frost does not injure them on the tree. Usually they are placed at first
in piles or windrows; and from these piles they are barreled or boxed for
market. If the choicest grades are to be made, they should be taken to a
packing-house.
The apple is an easy fruit to pick. The stem parts readily from the spur or
twig. Yet if the harvester is choice of his trees he will work deftly rather
than roughly, not to injure the bearing wood. The fruits are placed in
baskets as they are plucked, sometimes in a bag slung over the shoulders
but this is not the best way when the apples are ripe. In the packing-house,
the fruits are sorted into uniform grades if they are for market.
The better the trees are tilled, pruned and sprayed, the more uniform will be
the crop, and particularly if the fruit is thinned on the tree; yet the second-
class and even cull apples will be many under ordinary conditions. The
purchaser, noting the price of extra-grade apples, may not realize that he
buys only the remainder in a long process of grading, extending really over
the season or even throughout the life of the orchard. In all this time, the
grower has borne the risks of frosts and hail, insect and fungus invasions,
lack of help, and disastrously low prices. A finished product of high quality
is always expensive.
The usual apples on the open market are not the kind I have here tried to
describe. They are the product of indifferent orchards or of careless
handling. They are purchased for cooking; and the eating of apples out of
hand because they are attractive and really good is an unknown experience
with great numbers of our people. The polished shiny apples of the fruit-
stands are a delusion. The practice of burnishing the fruits produces a most
inartistic result, destroying the natural bloom and violating the appearance
of a natural apple. It is one thing to clean a fruit if it is soiled (which is
seldom the case with boxed or barreled apples); it is quite another thing to
rub and furbish an apple as if it were a billiard ball or glass marble and not a

living object that grew on a tree,—it sets false standards before the children.
Yet all this is in line with much of our practice whereby, in cookery and
manipulation, we disguise our foods and show our lack of appreciation of
the products themselves.
For home use, winter apples may well be stored in boxes in a cool moist
cellar if such a place is available. For best results in long keeping, the
temperature should be maintained below 40 degrees F. In a cellar containing
a furnace, the fruits shrivel from too much evaporation, as also in an attic or
other dry room. If the fruit must be stored in such places, it is well to keep
the box or barrel tightly closed, and the individual apples may be wrapped
in thin paper.
The apples must be sorted now and then, to remove the decaying ones; if
the fruit was carefully sprayed, handled and graded in the first place and not
too ripe, the necessity of frequent sorting will be considerably reduced. But
in any case, the keeping of apples, except under good cold-storage, is at
best a process of continually saving the most durable fruits. An "outside
cellar," if properly ventilated, usually is a good place in which to keep
apples. With the use of furnaces for heating and the cramped quarters of
city apartments, the keeping of apples for home supply is constantly more
difficult.
There is no apple like the one that comes up fresh from the cellar on a
winter night, cool, crisp, solid yet ready. It is the fruit of the home fireside. I
often wonder whether one in a hundred of the people know what a really
good and timely apple is.
The yield of an apple-tree depends on many factors,—age, size, thriftiness,
care it has received, whether it has escaped frost and other injuries; and
some varieties are much more prolific than others. Some apples are "shy
bearers," and for this reason soon are lost to propagation unless they have
some superlative merit; Yellow Bellflower is an example of a shy, or at least
an irregular, bearer. The great commercial varieties are of course good
bearers, as Baldwin, Ben Davis, Stayman, York Imperial, Oldenburg, Rome,
McIntosh, Wealthy, Yellow Transparent, Jonathan.
An apple-tree at full bearing is a wonderful sight at the harvest, particularly
in such varieties as McIntosh and Baldwin, in which the fruit is highly

colored and hangs well toward the outside of the tree-top. While the first
bearing year may yield only a half dozen fruits, the crop increases rapidly
with the added years,—one peck, one bushel, five bushels, ten bushels,
thirty bushels, even to sixty and seventy bushels on large sturdy old trees of
some varieties. The amateur, however, first prizes the quality and regularity
of his product for the sheer joy of it; then every added bushel is so much to
the good.

XVII

THE APPRAISAL OF THE APPLE-TREE
Now, therefore, in these sixteen little chapters have I tried to explain what I
feel about the apple-tree. It is a version to my friend, the reader, not a
treatise.
As the interpretation is in the realm of the sensibilities, so do I aim not
directly at concreteness. Yet as it is now the fashion to "score" all our
products by a scale of "points," I make a reasonable concession to it. But I
do not like the scoring of the fruit independently of the tree on which it
grew as if the fruit were only a commodity. I know we cannot bring the tree
to the exhibition-room, yet the perfect measure, nevertheless, is the tree and
the fruit together. In these later times we have said much against the use of
the museum specimen to the exclusion of the living object in its natural
place: let us be cautious, then, that we do not forget apple-trees in our
studies of apples.
Here I shall not arrange numerical scales of points for the apple-tree.
Sufficient for this occasion is the naming of the points, letting the reader
place his own percentage-value on each of them; for I am trying to teach,
not to instruct.
Yet I must insert, for the reader's benefit, certain good rules and scores that
have been adopted for the "judging" of the fruit by those experienced in
these matters. This excellent exercise of judging fruits at exhibitions has
gained much headway. Students of schools and colleges are trained for the
"judging teams," and great technical perfection has been attained.
To be exact is an exigency of science. I fear that we make exactness an end,
but that is neither here nor there on this occasion and I shall not now pursue
the subject further; I hope the judging trains the judge to see what he looks
at in other things as well as in apples, that it leads him into the pleasant
paths of causes and effects, that it opens the eyes of the blind.
The customary judging of plants and animals and their products consists in
assessing the attributes against a scale of perfection. Thus, if "form" or

"conformation" is worth 10 points in the hundred (by the estimation of good
authorities), the judge must decide whether the particular animal before him
merits 6 or 7, more or less. So if "flavor" in an apple is considered to be
worth 20 points of the hundred, the judge makes up his mind what rating,
within that limit, he shall accord to the fruit he is testing. The arrangement
in tabular form of the features for any product, with the number of points
stated for each, all summing 100, constitutes a "score-card." Thus there may
be a score-card for Merino sheep, another for Shropshires, one for apples,
and for any other objects whatsoever.
At competitive exhibitions, the element of comparison comes in. Perhaps it
is the only criterion to be considered in a particular case,—whether this
apple is better than that or than any number of others, which of several
"plates" or samples of apples merits first mention, which of two or more
collections of varieties is altogether most worthy of a prize. In these cases,
the different fruits or collections may be scored by the card, and the total
footings determine where the award shall go. Or, the different entries may
be judged in general, "by the eye;" this is the usual method, and is
satisfactory in the hands of persons whose standing and experience carry
conviction.
If one is to evaluate an apple-tree against a scale or code, these are some of
the features, in relative order of importance, to be considered:
1. Whether the tree is typical of the variety, in shape, manner of growth,
character of foliage and bloom.
2. Whether it is sound of all injury and disease, and free of blemish.
3. Whether it is duly vigorous and productive.
4. Whether its fruit is characteristic of the variety or kind.
5. Whether the pruning has been good; the thinning; the spraying.
6. Whether the performance of the tree has fulfilled reasonable
expectations.
The judging of fruits is facilitated by such score-cards and explanations as
the following:

1. For comparison of different dessert varieties.

Conformation 10
Size 5
Color 20
Core 5
Uniformity 5
Durability (keeping) 10
Condition 5
Freedom from blemish 10
Quality 30
——
100

2. For comparison of plates or samples of the same variety.

Form 15
Size 15
Color 25
Uniformity 25
Freedom from blemish 20
——
100

DIRECTIONS FOR JUDGING PLATES OF APPLES IN AN
EXHIBITION

Following are directions and explanations issued to judging teams in
exhibition contests, by an agricultural college:
(1) Form: The shape and conformation of the apples on any one plate
should be typical for the variety, the region of growth being somewhat
considered. All specimens on a plate should be uniform in shape. When
competition is close, a careful comparison of the more minute
characteristics of the basin, cavity and stem are made.

(2) Size: The specimens on any one plate should be uniform in size and of
the size most acceptable on the market for the variety. A plate may be
marked down for being either under or over the accepted commercial size.
In many exhibits, the ideal size is given in the premium announcements.
(3) Colors: All specimens in an entry should be uniformly colored in the
way that is considered perfect for the variety in the district where grown. In
judging color, one should consider (a) the depth and attractiveness of the
ground color, (b) the brightness and attractiveness of the over-color, (c) the
amount of the over-color. In a yellow or green apple, the yellow or green
should be clear and even all over, considering the maturity of the specimen.
In varieties that are typically blushed, (e. g., Maiden Blush) the specimens
should show a distinct tinge of red on the cheek exposed to the sun. With
such apples as Rhode Island Greening, that are only sometimes blushed, the
presence or absence of the blush should not detract except that the apples on
any one plate should be uniform. With apples typically over-colored, an
intense color for the variety is desirable.
The bloom may be wiped from apples, but in no case should polished
specimens be given the preference. Some exhibits have special rules
regarding polishing of apples.
(4) Conditions: Refers to the degree of ripeness. An apple to be in perfect
condition should be firm for the variety and free from the withering that
comes when apples are picked too green or when the fruit is over-ripe or
has not been stored properly.
(5) Freedom from blemish: All specimens should be free from blemishes of
all kinds. One should look particularly for (a) marks of fungous or other
disease, including stippin, (b) injury from insects of all kinds, (c)
mechanical injury, including loss of stem. Unmistakable evidence of codlin-
moth injury or San José scale should disqualify a plate. Other blemishes are
considered important in about the order named: Side worms, scab, stippin,
curculio or red-bug, skin punctures, bruises, stem pulled, russet (not typical
for variety) and limb rub. The extent of scab spots should be considered.
Minute spots are not as serious as some other blemishes, while spots which
deform the apple should disqualify the plate.

Other information: Five specimens constitute a plate, except when the rules
of the contest or exhibit state otherwise. Any variation from this rule
disqualifies the plate.
When a plate is not labelled with the correct variety name, it should not be
judged, but is disqualified and if possible the correct name is applied. If one
specimen on a plate is not as labelled, the whole plate is disqualified.
In some judging contests, the plates are not labelled with the variety name,
and the contestant is supposed to make the identification.
Precaution: Avoid pressing the specimens with the thumb and finger so as
to bruise the fruit. The degree of firmness can be determined by gentle
pressure with the inside of the whole hand.
Defects, apparent or otherwise, should not be probed with the finger nail,
pin, or other hard object.
Special care should be exercised to replace all specimens on the right plate.
Having in mind these definite criteria, the reader will know what is meant
by a "good apple" and also a good apple-tree. Measurements of perfection
aid us to estimate the deficiencies.

He who knows the apple-tree knows also its region. The landscape is his in
every blessed year; he sees the chariots of the months come down from the
distances and pass by him into the twilights. Clouds are his and the
repeating shadows on the hills. The morning when the blossoms are laden
with the fragrance of the night, high noon when the bees are busy, the
gloaming when the birds drop into the boughs, these are his by divine right.
The smell of new-plowed fields is his, with the urgent promise in them.
Seed time and harvest, as old as the procreant earth and as new as the latest
sunrise, are his to conjure. The verities are his for the asking, the strong
things of cultivated fields and of wild places. And mastery is his, that comes
of the amelioration of the land and the education of the tree. All these are
everyman's, and yet they are his alone.

INDEX
PAGE

Acid phosphate 45

Age of apple-trees 98

Alternate bearing 42

American Pomological Society 66

Apple-scab 95

Appleseed, Johnny 61

Arsenate of lead 95

Australia, Apples in 97

Bacteria 12

Bark of apple-tree 11
of cherry 11
of elm 11
of pear-tree 11

Bearing year 42

Black Gilliflower 73

Bloomless apple 75

Bolting trees 88

Bridge-grafting 88

Brush pile 27

Budding 50, 51

Buds 15, 19, 27

Calyx-tube 26

Canada, apples in 98

Canker 12

Cherimoya 8

Cherry, bark of 11

Christophine 8

Cider, treatise on 62

Cion-grafting 50, 79

Citrus fruits 8

Cleft-grafting 82

Coconut 8

Codlin-moth 12, 89

Custard apple 8

Diseases 46

Distance apart 43

Double apples 74

Doucin stocks 57

Downing, quoted 54, 67

Dwarf apple-trees 54

Elm, bark of 11

Endicott, Gov. 61

Enriching the land 45

Exhibitions 108

Fertilizing 40, 44, 45

Fig 8

Flower, structure of 20

Folger and Thomson, quoted 98

Fructicetum 78

Fruit-spurs and bearing 42

Fungi 12

Girdles 87

Graftage 49, 79

Grafts 81

Guava 8

Harvesting 102

Hillsides for orchards 44

Hogs in orchards 45

Hypanthium 26

Insects 46, 89

Judging apples 108

Knots 11, 85, 87

Land for apples 42

Langley, Batty 82

Lawson, William 82

Leaf-arrangement 29

Lichens 11

Lime-sulphur 95

Linnaeus 62

Lintner, J. A. 89

Malus 62

Mamone 8

Mango 8

Manning, mentioned 67

M'Mahon, quoted 66

Medlar 75

Mending trees 85

Moench, cited 75

Mound-layering 55

Muenchhausen, cited 75

Natural trees 51

New Zealand, apples in 97

Nitrate of soda 45

Origin of apple-tree 60

Ornamental apples 64

Ovary 20

Paint for wounds 86

Papaya 8

Paradise stocks 57

Parkinson, John 58

Pasturing 45

Pear, bark of 11

Phosphate, acid 45

Phyllotaxy 29

Picking apples 102

Piece-roots 50

Pistil 20, 26

Plant-breeder 51

Planting 42, 43

Plant-lice 12

Pollen-tube 20

Pollination 40

Pomegranate 8

Propagation of apple-tree 48, 54

Pruning 36, 40, 86, 104

Pyrus baccata 63
coronaria 63
diocia 75
Ioensis 63
Malus 62, 63
Soulardii 64

Receptacle of flower 26

Regions for apples 97, 99

Repairing trees 85

Root-grafting 50

Roots 43

Scale insects 12

Scale of points 108

Score-card 108

Seedless apple 74

Seedling trees 48, 51

Seeds, planting 48

Sharrock, Robert 81

Sheep in orchards 45

Sheepnose 73

Sod in orchards 44

Soil for apples 42

Spraying 40, 91, 95, 104

Star-apple 8

Stigma 20

Stocks 49

Storing 105

Struggle for existence 47

Style 20

Surgery 86

Surprise 73

Sweet-and-Sour 73

Thinning 38, 39

Thomson and Folger 98

Tilling 40, 44, 47, 104

Tree surgery 86

Varieties 66
list of 70

Water-core 74

Whip-graft 50

Wilder, mentioned 67

Wormy apples 89, 102

Transcriber's Notes

Some illustrations have been moved from their original positions to avoid
breaking up the text, and to put them in numerical order.
Variations in spelling and punctuation have been retained from the original
book except for the following changes:
Page 51: Both instances of "varities" changed to "varieties".
Page 74: "occuring" changed to "occurring".
Page 91: "foilage" changed to "foliage".
Page 93: "analagous" changed to "analogous".
Page 94: "or" changed to "nor".
"investigatior" changed to "investigator".
Page 100: "gravly" changed to "gravelly".

Page 113 (Index): "Appleseed, Johny" changed to "Appleseed, Johnny".
"Bark of Cheery" changed to "Bark of Cherry".
Page 115 (Index): "Linnæus" changed to "Linnaeus" to match text.

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