Glossary · Orchard
Chip budding
Definition
A grafting method in which a single bud with a chip of wood behind it is fitted into a matching cut on the rootstock, usually in late summer while the bark is still active.
- Subject
- Orchard
In more detail
Chip budding is the commercial nursery standard because it uses one bud rather than a whole shoot, so a limited amount of scion wood propagates many trees, and because the union takes in the same season while the tree is still growing.
Related terms
Terms that belong to the same part of the subject, or that this one is routinely confused with.
Orchard
Graft
The joining of a scion to a rootstock so that their cambium layers unite and grow as one tree. It is the only reliable way to reproduce an apple or pear cultivar.
Orchard
Whip and tongue
A bench grafting method in which matching sloping cuts, each with an interlocking tongue, hold scion and rootstock together while the union forms. Performed in late winter on dormant wood.
Orchard
Scion
A length of dormant one-year-old shoot from the cultivar to be propagated, joined to a rootstock so that it becomes the fruiting part of the tree.
Where to go next
- Cider glossary — The whole vocabulary, by subject and A–Z.
- Comparisons — Terms that are only really clear when set against the thing they are not.
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Sources
What this page rests on. Where a source is marked as registered rather than read, CiderHQ is recording that the body is authoritative on the subject without claiming to have worked through the document itself. See our evidence policy for what each state means.
NIAB (incorporating East Malling Research)
NIAB · research institute · retrieved 2026-08-24
East Malling developed the M-series apple rootstocks that determine tree size in essentially every modern orchard, cider orchards included. The authority CiderHQ uses for rootstock behaviour.