Farm News 06-12-05

Sunday morning, after chores, 72° and raining

The Contorted Filbert

My favorite tree on this place is a Contorted Filbert located in a planter box at the north deck. It has two seasons of interest, winter and early spring. It is at its very best when coated with ice. There are several pictures in the photo album of it in the winter.

As I understand it, the Contorted Filbert is a chaemera, a mixture of cells of two different types. It probably arose as a shoot at a graft junction, which meant it was probably close to the ground where it could be easily layered. It doesn't bear nuts, and they probably wouldn't germinate anyway nor come true, so the only way to create new plants is through vegetative propagation.

One can cut live twigs, give them proper treatment, and sometimes end up with plants that are clones of the stock plant from which they were cut. The cut twigs are called cuttings and they are the source for the most common methods of commercial production of trees and shrubs. There are some shrub rose cuttings in the cutting bed right now.

Layering is accomplished by bending a low-growing branch so that it will dip into the ground. Depending on the plant and other factors, you concoct a process you carry out on the parts of the twig that goes under the ground. Some plants require several years before they will develop enough roots to support the tip as an independent plant. I'm layering some Birch trees but have no roots, yet, after a year in the ground.

Finally, there is grafting and budding, whereby one convinces one kind of plant to grow on top of another kind of plant. Most fruit trees are grafted as are tea roses. Pencil sized twigs are cut at the same angle, then joined together, and wrapped with tape. If done correctly, the bottom of the lower twig will grow roots, and the top of the upper twig will grow leaves, flowers and fruit, and at the junction they will grow together.

Budding is similar to grafting except that a sliver of wood containing a single bud is used to create the new upper part of the plant. The stone fruits, cherries, peaches and such, are fairly easy to bud and offer a fairly rich set of possible combinations. The most common cross-species budding is peach on a Bush Cherry rootstock. The resulting plant is a peach like the source tree, but slightly dwarfed.

The upper part of a grafted tree is genetically identical to the tree from which it was cut. The lower part of the tree is identical to the tree from which it was cut, too. There are few combinations of upper and lower parts that will work. For some trees, the only way to grow new ones is to graft it to the top of an interstock, which has already been grafted to a rootstock. There are two cherry trees south of the south deck that are double grafted. Both graft unions are noticeable bulges with changes in bark texture.

Sometimes, new shoots will appear growing from a graft union. Usually, those shoots are either identical to the top or the bottom. Once in a great while, though, a shoot will appear in which some of the plant cells are grown from the lower plant, and some from the upper. It is not a hybrid, where the two genetic lines are mixed in each cell, it is a chaemera, which contains two kinds of cells from two different genetic lines. That is why the Contorted Filbert contorts, the two kinds of cells grow at different rates.

Filberts, or Hazelnuts, in general, are fiendishly hard to grow from cuttings. They are usually propagated by layers but when you have a dog that tends to chew on the lower branches, layering is quite difficult. On the Contorted Filbert there are several air layers. An air layer is exactly like an ordinary layer in the soil, except that the soil (actually, peat moss in this case) is wrapped around a twig and then enclosed in a plastic wrap. Air layering seems to offer the best chance of propagating this tree. Although I have searched the web and many books, I have never found a mention anywhere of how to propagate the Contorted Filbert. Perhaps that explains the high prices of small plants.

The air layers have been on the plant for about six months, now. There are also air layers on several other kinds of trees and shrubs that were done at about the same time as the Contorted Filbert. This would all be very scientific if I could remember where I put the layers.

Interesting Book: The Ancestor's Tale by Richard DawkinsThis is a book for dedicated Darwinians. Reading it during the great Kansas Debate on Evolution was appropriate. It's not an easy read, I spent several months on it, but it is worth the time if you are interested in how the species developed.



Cows, Vet Students, and Prisoners
Submitted by Dr. M., my heart surgeon

Veterinary students must do clinical rotations of all sorts. My current 3 week rotation is Production Medicine. This rotation involves traveling hither and yon in Georgia visiting farmers and cows. This past week the rotation sent me, 2 classmates and 2 clinicians to south Georgia to look in on the beef herd and the dairy herd at the Georgia State Prison in Reidsville. For those old timers out there, this is where the original "The Longest Yard" was filmed. Georgia, being in possession of plenty of land (it is the largest state east of the Mississippi) and at a prison, plenty of labor, endeavors to produce all it's own milk, beef and vegetables for the inmates. This not only saves the state money ( $1.5 million in milk alone last year) but contributes to rehabilitation of the prisoners. The College of Veterinary Medicine can then take students down to the property and teach them about beef and dairy herd management. For cows, this mostly involves ascertaining the pregnancy status of the cow. Milk production is dependant on dairy cows giving birth then milk, and beef production depends on cows giving birth and calves gaining weight.

The setup generally involves the prisoners or the staff (they have a real staff of dairymen at the dairy) moving the cows into a chute and making them stand still while a student works at the back end of the cow trying to determine the pregnancy status. This process can be made more interesting in all sorts of ways. Beef cows are feral animals; they stand in a pasture and graze and they only see people when something bad is going to happen (weaning, pregnancy checking, shots). So, beef cows are rather buck wild shall we say and can hurt themselves and their calves in the rounding up process. Their agitation is only increased by inmates who are cattle prod happy (something rather frowned upon by the veterinary establishment taught by Temple Grandin, PhD) and by the ubiquitous "cattle dog".

Real cattle dogs have been bred for generations to get cows to do what they want. They do not tolerate any guff from the cows, and look disparagingly at the people who think they are helping. However, just because a dog is in possession of teeth and testicles does not make it a cattle dog. The cur that was "helping" with the cows managed to send the cows the wrong way, and then once they got into the chute, try to nip them while they were in the chute. It's bad enough that a cow can kick you and break your leg, but to have it kicking at a dog while you are armpit deep in the manure factory is rather troublesome. But we students managed to pregnancy check around 250 cows on our first day, and there were no broken bones on our end.

Dr. M. failed to explain exactly what goes on when “. . . a student works at the back end of the cow trying to determine the pregnancy status.” The student must stick his/her arm up the cow's ass clear past the elbow, then, feeling down through the gut wall, try to feel for a fetus in the uterus. I'm sure that a bunch of cons were having fun watching Dr. M. stick her arm up cows' asses.

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