graffe

Graft comes from Old French graffe, from Latin graphium, from Greek grapheion (stylus, writing instrument), from graphein (to write). The connection between writing and horticulture was visual: the scion — the shoot of the desired variety — was cut to a point and inserted into a slit in the rootstock, the way a stylus was inserted into a holder. The pointed shape was the link.

Grafting was practiced in China and the Near East at least 4,000 years ago. The technique allows growers to combine the root system of one plant with the fruiting characteristics of another. Nearly every apple you eat comes from a grafted tree — apple seeds do not grow true to variety. The Granny Smith apple exists because Maria Ann Smith found a seedling in Australia in the 1860s, and every Granny Smith tree since then has been grafted from that original or its descendants.

The word graft acquired a second, unrelated meaning in English: corruption, bribery, illicit profit. This graft probably comes from a different root — possibly from the phrase 'graft work,' meaning hard labor, slang for the extra effort required to extract money from a position of power. The two meanings exist in English with no connection between them except the shared spelling. The gardener's graft joins living things together. The politician's graft takes what is not offered.

Modern grafting techniques are extraordinary. Tomato plants can be grafted onto disease-resistant rootstocks. Wine grapes are nearly universally grafted onto American rootstocks that resist phylloxera — the aphid that devastated European vineyards in the 1860s. Without grafting, the world wine industry would not exist in its current form. A technique older than writing, named by a word for writing, saved an industry.