142 THE FIG: ITS HISTORY, CULTURE, AND CURING. 
the small cuttings or the single eyes. A cutting which is badly dried 
should first be soaked or revived, then the eyes cut out as above and 
planted separately. This is preferable to planting any of the dry wood. 
SUCKERS. 
Figs may be propagated readily from suckers or so-called water- 
shoots, which spring up in abundance at the base of older trees. 
Such trees will bear as much and as good fruit as those grown from 
cuttings, but they are supposed by some growers to produce a greater 
quantity of objectionable suckers, which must be removed several 
times during the year. For cuttings such suckers are not as well 
suited, as the wood is very long between joints and generally is less 
well matured than the regular branches. Cuttings from branches 
are therefore to be preferred. When suckers are used they should 
be treated exactly like cuttings or rooted trees. When suckers are 
planted directly in the orchard care should be taken to set the butt 
end containing the few rootlets sufficiently deep in order that it may 
not dry out. It should be set just as deep as one would plant a cut- 
ting. The top of a sucker need not be cut back, but may be left a 
foot or two above the soil, just like a tree, provided, however, that it 
has been detached from the mother trunk with at least a few adhering 
rootlets. 
BUDDING AND GRAFTING. 
GENERAL REMARKS. 
The fig may be either budded or grafted, preferably the latter; but 
there is little advantage in doing so, except when it is desirable to 
change a tree of one variety into another more desirable, or when 
it is found advantageous to give a weak-growing variety a strong 
and vigorous root and stock. Nurseymen’s fig trees intended for sale 
are never grafted or budded, but are always grown from cuttings. 
Many people mistake the suckers of growing trees for suckers from 
the root below a supposed graft. Such suckers differ always somewhat 
in leaf from the older branches, but unless it is known with certainty 
that the tree is grafted it is safe to assume that the strange-looking 
suckers belong to the same kind as the parent fruiting tree. 
The time for budding and grafting is in winter, when the sap is com- 
paratively dormant. Fig trees, unlike other trees, are never entirely 
dormant, and in order to succeed in grafting it is of importance to have 
as little flow of sap as possible, else the sap will throw off the bud. 
BUDDING. 
Fig trees are seldom budded, as grafting is much preferable. Still, 
if budding is desired as a curiosity it may be done. It is believed, 
however, that budded trees will not make as strong trees as those 
