Graft

The origin of grafting is uncertain. The peoples of ancient civilizations who grew fruit trees may have observed natural unions made by twigs and branches of compatible trees growing next to one another, and copied what had occurred through wind and abrasion. Grafting was applied routinely to apples and pears in England by the eighteenth century, and was utilized to great effect by the English plant breeder Thomas Andrew Knight. Thomas Jefferson wrote that he had "inoculated common cherry buds into stocks of large kind" in 1767, in a Garden Journal he kept for his residence Monticello in Virginia. Jefferson's record predates the work of Knight, and indicates that knowledge of grafting techniques was widespread at that time.