class="x-ebookmaker-pageno" title="[Pg 25]"/> the center is a big one, already recognized as a fruit-bud: here is the promise of speckled, furrowed, striped apples next August. Thereby I learn that it is not enough to be good to the tree in the year in which I desire its fruit: I must begin the year before, and the year before that, and even back at the time when the tree is planted; and if the tree at planting-time is not a good tree, it will be at a disadvantage perhaps all its life long.

12. September 22, and the buds are formed for the next year's crop

Finally the apple is ripe and ready. At the stem end is the "cavity," a depression, deep or shallow, according to variety, in which the stem is set. At the blossom end is the "basin," also with the characteristics of the variety as to depth and width and contour, in which the calyx-lobes persist, and inside the calyx are the remains of the dead stamens and styles; the calyx may be "closed" or "open," the character being a mark of the particular variety.

Cut the apple through the center lengthwise (Fig. 13); note the curved outline of the core (the pistil) extending half or more across the fruit; if you do not see this outline, cut an apple until you do; carefully open the five cells or compartments and within the parchment walls find the two seeds attached by their points which are directed toward the stem end; perhaps one of the seeds has failed, but probably a cavity marks its place; perhaps both seeds have failed; perhaps the cell has more than two seeds.

13. The apples in section

Cut an apple cross-wise: note the five radiating cells of the core, the number and attachment of the seeds; note the ten points, imbedded in the flesh, marking the outline of the core. Cut an apple cross-wise above the core and beneath it; note where these points vanish and try to harmonize them with the core-outline as seen in the lengthwise section; probably you will discover why you may not see the core-outline in all the lengthwise sections you make. Before you leave the fruit, note whether single seeds in a cell are the same shape as the two seeds in a cell.

The flesh outside the core-outline is interpreted to be stem structure rather than pistil structure. Sometimes an apple bears a scale-like leaf on its exterior, suggesting that the outer part of the fruit is stem. The older morphologists interpreted the apple flower to comprise a hollowed calyx (calyx-tube) inside which is the pistil and on the rim of which are the petals and stamens. The structure now is regarded as a hollowed receptacle or stem (hypanthium), with the pistil inside, the petals and stamens on its rim. We noted in the flower that the ovary part of the pistil is solidly imbedded in this receptacle, but that the five styles are free. The pear and quince are of similar structure, but the peach, plum and cherry are simple ripened pistils.

Here, in this chapter, we have discovered some of the epochs in the life of the apple. Usually we let the imagination run only to the mature fruit, thinking of the harvest, but in all the weeks before the harvest the apple has been growing and taking form. As these weeks have not been blank to the apple-tree, so shall they not be blank to me.

V

THE BRUSH PILE

Today I visited the brush pile back of the orchard. Here the trimmings of the winter are placed, waiting to be burned when dry. How many are the archives that will be destroyed! Here are histories in every bud and twig and scar, of the seasons, of the accidents and deaths, the records of the tree as there are records of families.

These records are not written in numbers or in letters, nor yet in hieroglyphs; yet are they understandable. Alphabet is not needed, and the key is simple.

From the brush pile of records I took one. I must describe it in part by a picture (Fig. 14). On the living trees at this writing the petals mostly have fallen and the leaves are nearly full grown. This branch was cut in winter. It has lain in the snow and rain, putting forth no flowers or leaves. Yet we can read it.

It is May, 1921. The terminal shoot is obviously of 1920; we shall name it No. 1. It is a foot long, smooth and glossy, terminating at the base (o) in a "ring" and at a short stub or branchlet. If we count the buds on all sides of the shoot and at the tip we find them to be 13. The largest one is at the tip, and they are mostly successively smaller toward the base. Apparently the growth-energy was expended in the upper parts of the twig, making large full buds. In fact, the three or four lowermost buds are scarcely developed and would not grow unless the limb were broken off above them; they are dormant buds.

14. A three-year record.—In a leisure hour, trace the history of these parts; it will open your eyes.

Looking along the shoot, I find that every six buds stand in the same line: the sixth bud is over the first, seventh over the second, eighth over the third. If I were to fasten a string to bud No. 1 and wind it around the stem to my left, passing over every bud until I had reached the sixth, I should find that it had made two circuits of the stem (passed twice around it) and had passed over five spaces between buds. This is the leaf-arrangement or phyllotaxy of the apple-tree, expressed by the fraction 2/5. The space between two buds is two-fifths of a diameter, and two circuits (ten-fifths) must be passed before a bud comes over the one from which we started. The 2/5 leaf-arrangement obtains on cherry, peach, apricot, pear, raspberry and many others; but a very different order is that of the linden, grape, currant, lilies, elm, maple.

We cannot understand this simple unbranched terminal twig (No. 1) until we know what took place last year. A year ago, in the spring of 1920, a terminal bud that had formed in 1919 expanded and gave rise to this rapidly growing shoot. By the end of May or early June this shoot had grown to twelve inches long, for the growth in length on the twigs of trees is usually completed that early. This shoot bore leaves on the 2/5 arrangement; in the axil of every leaf was a bud, the strongest buds being with the strongest leaves at the middle and top of the shoot; in the autumn of 1920 these leaves fell, but the buds remained, persisted the winter, and were ready to "grow" in the early spring of 1921. We see them on No. 1 (Fig.