A New Aid to Finding the Right Stock

摘要

The art of grafting plants has a long history, going back beyond written records. It was fostered by the observation of natural unions where tree branches crossed and subsequently fused together. But initially the emphasis was on creating novelty: thehope that the stock could permanently change the scion for the betterment of mankind. A whole body of hearsay grew up on this belief. Thus in the earliest printed treatise on gardening in the English language (Arnold 1811) there is much space devoted to "graffing", with advice on how to make apples go red by grafting on elm or alder, and how to make them lose their cores by doubling a scion over and grafting both ends. It took practical, down-to-earth plantsman Philip Miller (1731) to explode these myths and report only the results of actual trials. Today we value grafting for the very opposite reason: preserving the scion genetically unchanged, any alterations being attributable to vigour or transmission of virus.