CHAPTER IV. PLANT MANIPULATION 
Section I. PLANT PROPAGATION 
340. Propagation, as the term is generally used in 
plant culture, is the artificial multiplication of plants, i. e., 
reproduction (16) encouraged or induced by the knowledge, 
skill and care of the cultivator. 
Theoretically, any part of a plant containing living proto- 
plasm, with sufficient assimilated food or tissue capable of 
assimilating food, may, under proper conditions, develop 
into a complete plant. But in practice, we have not yet 
been able to fully accomplish this end; for example, the 
roots and leaves of some plants have not been induced to 
form buds. 
341. Plants are Propagated by Numerous Methods, 
but only two of these are distinct in kind, viz., by seeds, 
and by division of the plant. In propagation by seeds, the 
embryo of the seed (54) is the vital center whence the new 
plant is developed. In propagation by division, a living bud 
(128) from the parent plant, or a bit of tissue capable of 
forming a bud, is substituted for the embryo of the seed. In 
seed propagation, the resulting plant is the product of sex- 
ual fecundation (150), and hence cannot be considered as 
strictly a part of the parent. It does not necessarily re- 
semble the parent closely. In propagation by division, on 
the other hand, the resulting plant may be regarded as 
simply a continuation of the growth of the parent in a new 
location, and with rare exceptions, very closely resembles 
the parent. 
