HORTICULTURAL RESEARCH 287 



practice is in the careful trimming of the broken ends of roots, 

 which is supposed to be essential, even to the extent of laying 

 down the law that the cut must be made in a certain direction. 

 This is founded, no doubt, on the erroneous idea that the cut end 

 of a root will grow when the tree is replanted, which it cannot 

 do for the simple reason that there are no meristematic cells 

 there capable of forming a new root-tip. Nor even do the 

 majority of new roots form near to the ends of the old ones : in a 

 large number of cases which were investigated, using apples on 

 the paradise stock, it was found that only 15 per cent, of the new 

 roots formed within a quarter of an inch from the old root- 

 ends, a like number started from the stem itself, the remaining 

 70 per cent, arose from the other parts of the main roots. More- 

 over a long straggling root will often fail to send out any new 

 rootlets, the root eventually dying in consequence ; or if rootlets 

 are sent out from near the end, these are of a feeble character. 

 Instances of this may be noticed on examining Figs. 4 and 5. 

 Whether the end of a broken root be trimmed or not appears 

 to make no difference to the welfare of the tree and to affect 

 only slightly the new root-formation from the particular root 

 which is broken or cut, the breaking, instead of cutting the root, 

 being merely tantamount to a little extra shortening. 



It has thus been found that all the practices which are so 

 strenuously advocated as essential to the proper planting of a 

 tree are for the most part immaterial and may, even with some 

 slight advantage, be violated ; whilst as regards one of them, 

 ramming, the advantage in such violation is very considerable : 

 and this novel practice in planting is not only borne out by 

 strict experiment but is the rational consequence of what is 

 known as to the way in which roots are formed. It must be 

 admitted, however, that these experiments were not originally 

 based on any views as to what ought to be but arose from an 

 endeavour to demonstrate the necessity of following all the rules 

 prescribed for the " proper " planting of a tree. One set of trees 

 was planted with all the customary rules violated by way of 

 object lesson ; but instead of suffering from the treatment they 

 received, they flourished better than their carefully planted 

 neighbours. The results were set aside as accidental and fresh 

 plantations made in a similar way : this course was repeated four 

 times during six or seven years but always with the same result, 

 so that the fact had, perforce, to be accepted. Other more 

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