Practical and Scientific Fruit Culture

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Lee and Shepard, 1866 - 523 pages

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Page 415 - The seed-coats are generated wholly by the female parent, and these regulate the bulk of the lobes and plantule : and I have observed, in raising new varieties of the Peach, that when one stone contained two seeds, the plants these afforded were inferior to others. The largest seeds, obtained from the finest fruit, and from that which ripens most perfectly and most early, should always be selected. It is scarcely necessary to inform the experienced gardener, that it will be necessary to extract the...
Page 343 - ... dung and the mould from an old hotbed, equal parts, will answer exceedingly well; the surface should then be covered with some half-rotted dung, and the roots left till the following autumn brings its annual care. It may be found that after a few years of root-pruning, the circumferential mass of fibres will have become too much...
Page 55 - The feldspar, which is as it were the cement of the stone, forms a fine clay: the mica partially decomposed mixes with it as sand; and the undecomposed quartz appears as gravel, or sand of different degrees of fineness. As soon as the smallest layer of earth is formed on the surface of a rock, the seeds of lichens, mosses, and other imperfect vegetables which are constantly floating in the atmosphere, and which have made it their...
Page 398 - I did not pretend to be able to develope, but undoubtedly depending upon certain affinities either of structure or constitution, there was a greater disposition to fertility in some than in others. Subsequent experiments have confirmed this view to such a degree as to make it almost certain that the fertility of the hybrid or mixed offspring depends more upon the constitutional than the closer botanical affinities of the parents.
Page 385 - Nile, each would adapt its habits to the climate in which it were placed ; and if both were subsequently brought, in early spring, into a climate similar to that of Italy, the plant which had adapted its habits to a cold climate would instantly vegetate, whilst the other would remain perfectly torpid.
Page 418 - The bark of the root now begins to execute its office of depositing alburnous or woody matter ; and as soon as this is formed, the sap, which had hitherto descended only through the cortical vessels, begins to ascend, through the alburnum. The plumule in consequence elongates, its leaves enlarge and unfold, and a set of vessels, which did not exist in the root, are now brought into ad ion.
Page 54 - ... decomposes, and likewise the mica, but the first the most rapidly. The feldspar, which is as it were the cement of the stone, forms a fine clay ; the mica partially decomposed...
Page 385 - If two plants of the vine or other tree of similar habits, or even if obtained from cuttings of the same tree, were placed to vegetate, during several successive seasons, in very different climates; if the one were planted on the banks of the Rhine, and the other on those of the Nile, each would adapt its habits to the climate in which it...
Page 415 - New varieties of every species of fruit will generally be better obtained by introducing the farina of one variety of fruit into the blossom of another, than by propagating from any single kind. When an experiment of this kind is made between varieties of different size and character, the farina of the smaller kind should be introduced into the blossoms of the larger...
Page 416 - In these organs, but principally in the cotyledons, is deposited as much of the concrete sap of the parent plant as is sufficient to feed its offspring, till that has attached itself to the soil, and become capable of absorbing and assimilating new matter. The plumule differs from the...

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