An 'imp' Is An Off-shoot Or Cutting. Thus An 'ymp Tree' Was A Grafted Tree, Or One Grown From A Cutting, Not From Seed.

HomeFortune CookiesMiscellaneous Collections

An 'imp' is an off-shoot or cutting. Thus an 'ymp tree' was
a grafted tree, or one grown from a cutting, not from seed.
'Imp' properly means a small devil, an off-shoot of Satan,
but the distinction between goblins or bogles and imps from
hell is hard to make, and many in the Celtic countries as
well as the English Puritans regarded all fairies as devils.
The fairies of tradition often hover uneasily between the
ghostly and the diabolic state.
-- Katharine Briggs, A dictionary of Fairies

Related: