RAISING PLANTS FROM CUTTINGS. 



19 



Fig. W.—Cuttinss of 

 Madura aiirantiaca. 



ditlously. If we cut the 

 roots the size of a pen, into 

 pieces 2 or 2^ inches long, 

 and plant them upright, we 

 shall have the same year as 

 many plants as there were 

 pieces planted. These cut- 

 tings should be made in 

 the open air, along a bor- 

 der or strip of peat, with- 

 out any other covering than 

 the soil where they are to 

 grow. If we plant them 

 vertically, we should cover 

 them very slightly with 

 earth ; and at the first watering the cut will 

 be uncovered. If we place them horizontally, 

 they should be covered with eai'th about one- 

 sixteenth of an inch deep. This last method 

 succeeds equally well, but it is less certain 

 than the first. 



I have here mentioned these few species 

 only to show what advantage we may derive 

 from the method of multiplying dycotyledo- 

 nous plants by cuttings of the roots ; the 

 good results which I have just pointed out 

 will encourage, I hope, other attempts of the 

 same nature to be made upon other plants, 

 whose multiplication upon hot-beds has been 

 attended by little or no result. 



At the time when I was about to send the 

 present treatise to the press, I discovered a 

 new fact in corroboration of what I have stated, 

 and I feel obliged to publish it. During the 

 last six years, I have many times tried to 

 strike an Araucaria from cuttings of the roots ; 

 up to this time, I had had no satisfactory re- 

 sults, but to-day, 10th May, 1844, 1 perceive 

 that the cuttings of the roots of Araucaria 

 Cunninghami, | inch in diameter, and about 

 2 1 to 3 inches long, planted in October, 

 1843, are at last sending forth shoots. I at- 

 tribute my failure up to this time, to the pre- 

 sence of the glasses with which I covered the 

 cuttings : the concentration of air charged 

 with an excess of moisture makes them perish. 

 In the first place, the pots which contained 

 the roots, were, in October last, plunged into 

 tan still impregnated with a gentle heat ; 

 pei'ceiving in March that the earth in the pots 

 was decomposed, I changed it, without being 



able to distinguish the least sign of vegeta- 

 tion on the cuttings. The pots were then 

 placed upon a bench and exposed to a mode- 

 rate temperature ; in April these pots were 

 placed upon a warm bed of tan ; and it was 

 this, doubtless, which, to ray great surprise, 

 a month afterwards, excited vegetation. 



All cultivators who know how to manage 

 the Araucaria will, perhaps, doubt the truth 

 of this phenomenon ; but if they are willing 

 to convince themselves by testimony of their 

 eyes, I shall be happy to present them with 

 a palpable proof. The realisation of this re- 

 markable experiment, which nobody, I be- 

 lieve, has before made known, will, I hope, 

 become a fact of great importance both in 

 horticulture and agriculture. 



If, as I have reason to believe will be the 

 case, this mode of cuttings by roots succeeds 

 as well upon all the species of the beautiful 

 fiimily of Coniferae, the new Pines of the 

 Himalaya and of other countries, which would 

 for a long time have remauied scarce, may 

 soon be propagated with certainty ; and I 

 dare affirm, that the plants raised from cut- 

 tings of the roots will form trees as well con- 

 stituted as those produced from seeds. I am 

 going to follow up my experiments upon 

 Araucaria excclsa, being nearly certain at the 

 outset that I shall obtain the same results as 

 I did upon Araucaria Cunninghami. The 

 autumn docs not seem to me the best season for 

 this sort of operation, it ought to succeed best 

 in spring ; a close observation teaches us this. 



There are some plants which are always 

 kept so nuich the more scarce, as it has been 

 impossible to multiply them even by the last 

 process ; such, for example, as Ilalesia dip- 

 tera, of which I have never been able to save 

 a single layer once detached from its parent 

 plant, notwithstanding these layers have been 

 well rooted, and under the constant care of 

 the operator. Likewise, we have never ob- 

 tained a result of the grafts of Halesia dip- 

 tera made on tetraptera. However, I have 

 reason to believe that cuttings of the roots 

 will strike. The stock of Halesia diptera 

 which exists in the Jardin des Plantes, be- 

 gins to give fertile seeds. Let us hope that 

 soon we shall be able to obtain from some in- 

 dividuals seed of this beautiful shrub. 



