In message <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, Richard Brown <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
writes
Nick Wedd wrote:
I prefer "unprune" to "graft".
"Graft" implies adding something to a tree which does not naturally
belong there.
Not "naturally"?
Consider a tree, to which you, the tree surgeon, have taken a pair of shears,
and lopped off a branch. What has been pruned, has been pruned.
Q. By what method will you now re-attach that branch to the tree?
A. By grafting.
If the pruning were a real process, you would then feel daft. But if it
were a virtual process, you could just reverse it, and unprune the
branch.
"Unprune" suggests that there is a branch which was implicitly there
all along, you earlier decided not to consider it, but you have now
reversed that decision.
Just as there was a branch, both implicitily and explicitly, that you decided
to lop off with your shears. Now that you have decided you didn't really want
to lop it off, and reversed your decision, by what method will you
re-attach it?
Grafting.
If you want to reject "unprune" because it "isn't a word", then use
"grow" or "widen", which suggest adding something which is naturally
part of that tree.
If you want to reject "graft" you'll have to come up with a more
convincing argument.
Arboriculturists do not graft on the material that they removed earlier.
They graft on foreign material, from a different species or variety. In
my garden I have a medlar (_Mespilus_ _germanica_) grafted onto a
hawthorn (_Crataegus_ _monogyna_) rootstock. It would be pointless to
graft something from the same variety.
I assert, further, that the terms "scion" and "stock" could be given explicit
technical definitions in this context.
I hope such definitions will emphasise the foreign nature of the scion.
Nick
--
Nick Wedd [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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