CHAPTER II 



ALSO FOR THE LAYMAN 



How to use the Commercial Growth- Substances 

 in Quickening the Rooting of Cuttings 



Bees burnt to ashes, and a ly made with the ashes, trimly 

 decks a bald head, being washed with it. — [Unconfirmed 

 quotation from N. Culpeper's Herbal (1653); se non k vero, 

 i molto ben trovato.^ 



How to Buy 



The best-known artificial growth-substance is that variously 

 called indole-acetic acid and indolyl-acetic acid, with or 

 without a hyphen and with or without the prefix 3- or p 

 (pronounced beta). It is still sometimes called heteroauxin. 

 The prefixes serve amongst chemists to distinguish difi^erent 

 relatives in a chemical family — all the members of which in 

 the present case consist of the same number of atoms of 

 carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen, but arranged in 

 certain systematically-different ways. Such relatives do not 

 necessarily have a similar action on plants. The prefix 3- 

 means here the same as p. Whenever the prefix is omitted, as it 

 often is in this book, a 3- acid is meant, for little is known 

 about the others, such as the 5- substances. You would be 

 quite safe in asking for simply indole-acetic acid, because only 

 the 3- acid — the one known to be eflPective in causing rooting 

 on cuttings — is available commercially. 



Possibly slightly more powerful than indole-acetic acid 

 as far as root-production on cuttings is concerned, are two 

 other substances. One of them is 3-indole-butyric acid, 

 which is chemically very like indole-acetic acid, being just a 

 little more complex. When speaking of, or placing an order 

 for, this substance, you may again omit any prefix, and ask 



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