PEOPAGATION BY CUTTINGS. 85 



the stem just below the surface of the ground. Originating below 

 the graft the}^ would not bear fruit of the variety desired, and such 

 a grafted plant Avould always be liable to serious depreciation in 

 value. It is suggested, however, for the benefit of any who may 

 desire to follow up this method of propagation, that a plant produced 

 by root grafting would be somewhat less liable than a stem graft to 

 the production of shoots from the stock. 



Propagation by layering is not open to the objection just raised 

 against propagation by grafting. The difficulty with layering is 

 that only a few plants can be propagated from a parent in this way 

 at one time. The method of layering is slow and therefore, from a 

 commercial point of view, faulty. 



Propagation by cuttings, whether of the root or the stem, is subject 

 to neither of the objections raised to grafting and to layering. In 

 a plant raised from a cutting the whole plant body, including the 

 root, is of the variety desired, and alien shoots can never be pro- 

 duced. Furthermore, hundreds or even thousands of cuttings may 

 be taken at one time from a valuable plant and a large stock of off- 

 spring can soon be accumulated. 



The present objection to the propagation of the swamp blueberry 

 by cuttings is the difficulty of making a high percentage of the cut- 

 tings grow. In this respect the experience of the last two years may 

 be characterized as a series of frequent alternations of high hopes and 

 disappointing failures. The intimate knowledge, hoAvever, acquired 

 from these experiments regarding the behavior of cuttings under 

 many different conditions gives ground for confidence in ultimate 

 success; but as we are only in the middle of things in this matter a 

 full description of the experiments with cuttings must be deferred 

 until satisfactory results shall confirm our confidence in the methods 

 used. 



For the present it may suffice to show an illustration of a plant from 

 a root cutting (fig. 81) and another of plants from twig cuttings 

 (PL XVII) of the big-berried bush from Greenfield,' N. H. In Plate 

 XVIII is illustrated, from a photograph taken in the winter of 1009-10, 

 a plant grown from a cutting taken on October 15, 1908, from a seed- 

 ling of September. 1907. Although itself only a year old, and even 

 then taken from a seedling only a year old, the plant after passing 

 the winter of 1908-9 in the greenhouse and the summer of 1909 out- 

 doors, had laid down 156 flowering buds at the time it was photo- 

 graphed. 



AVhile these cases show that swamp blueberry plants can be pro- 

 duced successfully from root cuttings and stem cuttings, the successes 

 have been so erratically distributed that the recommendation of any 

 particular method is hardly warranted at the present time. 



193 



