PULLING OFF POTATO BLOSSOMS.
The Boston Cultivator, speaking of this process, says: “As the qualities of the potato-ball or apple differ considerably from the root or tuber, it may be that the juices destined to nourish the balls will not, on removing the blossoms, go to increase the roots. This view is not unreasonable.”
We do not suppose the theory to be, that the sap tending to the bloom and ball returns to the root. But, simply, that there will be so much less food to be prepared, and therefore so much less exhaustion to the vegetable economy. It is well known that the filling out and ripening of seeds is eminently exhausting to the plant. It has long been the custom of florists who wish show-flowers, to refuse their bulbous plants leave to bloom for one season, plucking off the bud, that they might be so much the stronger for the next year’s blooming.
But we suppose the truth to be this. The sap is prepared in the leaf and enters the distributing vessels of the plant. It is conveyed to every organ; each part, receiving its portion, modifies it by a farther chemical action peculiar to itself. Thus in the case of an apple-tree. The elaborated sap which goes to the leaf, the alburnum, the liber, the blossom, the fruit is the same in all; but the fruit gives it a still further elaboration, by which it imparts the peculiar properties belonging to it, in distinction from the tissues; so of the bark, the blossom, etc. If, then, the seed-vessels are removed, so much less elaborated sap is consumed as they would have required; and this, or at least, portions of it, are given to the other parts of the vegetable economy.