ORANGES & LEMONS

Dominion, Volume 25, Issue 278, 19 August 1932, Page 12

ORANGES & LEMONS

Producing “Lemoranges” GRAFTING PROCESS A large proportion of the oranges on sale in England this summer have been grown from lemon pips, states a Yorkshire weekly. The fact registers a big achievement in fruit culture and is the direct sequel to prolonged experiments by South African Government scientists in the State nurseries which the Commonwealth maintains in the interests of its enormously expanding fruit production. The experiments were inspired by the fact that the orange tree is extremely susceptible to frosts which, in past years, have seriously affected the crop. The lemon tree, fortunately, is much hardier, and the efforts of the South African scientists have been directed to “stealing” its sturdiness for the orange groves. They have now succeeded completely. Lemon trees are grown from pips (seeds) in the nurseries, and in their first year are “budded over” to oranges by a new form of grafting, in which an orange twig is Inserted in an incision in the lemon sapling, and bound with raffia until it becomes an integral part of the stock. ' The resultant trees are sold, when two years old, to the commercial growers of South Africa. So highly is the “lemorange” tree esteemed that. Inst year, they took every plant in the Government nursery.