American Pomology. ApplesWarder, J. A. (John Aston)
Science
American Pomology. Apples
Warder, J. A. (John Aston)
Apples
All propagation of plants must depend upon the development of seeds or
of buds, and all will arise from the growth and extension of cells.
The seed and the bud are much more nearly related than a casual
observer would at first sight suppose. The early phylologists thought
they discovered that in the seed was enwrapped the image of the future
tree--a dissection of the seed would appear to demonstrate this. It is
composed of separate parts which are capable of being developed into
the root, stem, and appendages, but they have yet to be so developed;
the several parts that we find in the seed are merely the
representative parts. But the seed has the future of the tree within
itself, it has certain qualities of the future tree impressed upon it
in its primary organization, within the capsule of the fruit of the
parent plant, so that in a higher sense the image of the future tree
does exist within the seed. Within the bud, still more plainly and
more distinctly visible, is the future tree manifest, and we may
produce a tree from a bud as certainly as we do from a seed. Subjected
to circumstances favorable for growth, the bud, as well as the seed,
will emit roots, will form its stem, branches and appendages, and will
become a tree; differing from the product of the seed only in this,
that in the latter the resulting organism constitutes a new individual
which may vary somewhat from its parent, in the former it is only a
new development of a part of a previously existing organization. The
similarity existing between the two is exceedingly close, and is a
matter of great importance in horticultural operations. Dr. Lindley,
in the Gardener's Chronicle, says very truly, that "every bud of a
tree is an individual vegetable, and a tree, therefore, is a family or
swarm of individual plants, like the polype with its young growing out
of its sides, or like the branching cells of the coral insect."
Similar opinions, more or less modified, have been expressed by
subsequent physiologists, and are familiar to men of science in every
country and, we may add, are also universally accepted as true by all
who claim a right to express an opinion upon the subject.--Men of
science recognize the individuality of buds.--Nobody doubts the
individuality of buds.--In a gardening aspect, the individuality of
buds is the cardinal point upon which some of our most important
operations turn; such, for example, as all modes of propagation
whatever, except by seed. If this be not fully understood, there is no
possible explanation of the reasons why certain results are sure to
follow the attachment of a bud, or the insertion of a graft, or the
planting of a cutting, or the bending of a layer, or the approach of a
scion, or the setting of an eye--our six great forms of artificial
multiplication. In his Elements of Botany, the same writer says: "An
embryo is a young plant produced by the agency of the sexes, and
developed within a seed--a leaf bud is a young plant, produced without
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