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.

[Illustration: 16. The whip-graft before tying.]

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 scatt