ON THE LAND

Waimate Daily Advertiser, Volume XXIV, 18 December 1926, Page 4

ON THE LAND

; News and INotes for the Farmer.

Nevertheless, in spite of the familiarity and age of this procedure, it has remained one of the things that botanical science knows little about. Just what happens when a graft “takes” or | refuses to “take” is still a good deal of a mystery. Plant surgery is older than human surgery, but much less is known about it. During the last four years, however. Professor Lucien Daniel, of the University of Rennes, in France, has begun to repair this lack. Undertaking to perfect himself as a plant surgeon, able to manipulate the parts of the human body. Professor Daniel has finished by doing things which animal operators cannot accomplish at all. Not content with the usual procedure of grafting two plants of the same species together, he lias grafted potato plants on tomato plants, cress on cabbages, sunflowers on the roots of artichokes and a dozen other unexpected combinations. The results are not mere monstrosities, useful only ns museum specimens. On the contrary, .much lias already been learned concerning the nature of plant tissues and the things that make plants come true to type or the reverse, lhe practical technique of making grafts between one plant and another has been approved. Most promising < f all. Professor Dania! believes that he will be able by the use of such grafted vegetables to modify certain vegetable varieties so that they will be hardier or otherwise more useful. This, it must be admitted, is still a hope rather than a fact. Only time will prove whether the professor is right about these particular practical values. The interest value for botanical theory alicady is evident. The two kinds of plant tissues that are made to grow together are essentially of the same kind. Although varieties of plum tree or of grape vine may differ in the exact kinds of fruit that they bear, they remain, nonetheless, very similar to each other. The living cells of two- different varieties of grape vine are presumably much alike and quite able to get along comfortably together in the hybrid plant produced by the graft. It is somewhat otherwise with the grafts accomplished by Professor

Daniel. That, indeed, is what gives this work its unusual interest and suggestiveness. The tomato and potato, for example, are quite dissimilar plants. It is true that they belong to the same botanical family, that of the Solanacea. They are less different from each other than either of them would be from, say, a< pine tree. Nevertheless, they are far less alike than are the two varieties of grapes, or the two kinds of plums, or other fruit varieties which agriculturists have been accustomed to join by grafting. Still wider differences exist between some of the other kinds of plants which Professor Daniel has been able to join successfully by his grafts. One, for example, is a variety of sage grafted on to a daisy.