Page:The Olive Its Culture in Theory and Practice.djvu/87

Rh after the graft has taken. Manured and placed in good earth, the olive requires only three years to form after having been grafted.

The grafts should be taken from that part of the tree which is opposite the mid-day sun. They are chosen from the shoot that would bear fruit the following year.

Those who graft the young tree upon the trunk and not upon the mother branches, take the scions from the shoots which are about to flower.

The knots, or knobs seen on the trunks of olives that have attained any age, are caused by brushing off the suckers that put out on the trunk. The bark forms over the wound made, and a slight excrescence is raised, which persistently sends out further shoots, and the same process being repeated a multitude of times, the final result is a knob, or egg, of varying size. These, cut from the tree and planted at a depth of from four to six inches, give birth to an innumerable quantity of young plants, and is the favorite mode of propagating in certain parts of Italy, having superseded that by cuttings altogether.

The sucker is a developed egg or knob, having germinated while on the tree.

These knobs should be cut from the tree with a sharp instrument and the wound carefully smoothed over and covered with clay or grafting wax. A mixture of cow-dung and clay make a cheap substitute for the latter. But the weight of opinion is against this mode of propagation. The wounds caused the tree are grievous and hard to be borne. They give an opening to the "Lupa" or rot which is ready to attack the olive on the slightest provocation. Only a doomed tree should be dismembered in this way.

The suckers about the root of an olive may be laid down and covered with earth and will give further plants.

The underground portion of the olive tree is composed of two