GROWING PLANTS FROM LAYERS 71 



like a hairpin to fasten it in place, and then the place is covered lightly. 

 If kept moist the covered part will strike root and the outer end will be 

 found after a time to be rooted and can be transplanted. By covering a 

 long branch or cane several plants will be secured at one operation, as 

 there may be shoots and roots at each joint and they can be cut apart and 

 separately planted. This is a very successful way to get new plants of 

 "asparagus fern" asparagus plumosus. 



The same principle can be employed in rooting upright stems without 

 laying them down, by arranging a split pot or other receptacle to hold 

 soil around such a stem. This is a less certain method because of the 

 difficulty of keeping the soil continually moist enough to cause the rooting. 

 This requires constant attention. 



BUDDING AND GRAFTING. 



There is a multitude of ways of bringing a part of one plant in contact 

 with another so that the "inner barks" or "growing layers" (cambium) of 

 both shall grow together. This art has been known from prehistoric times, 

 probably, for the earliest literatures make references to it, and all races of 

 men which have dealt intelligently with plants have devised ingenious 

 methods of employing the natural disposition of certain plants to unite 

 their tissues and combine their energies while each largely maintains its 

 own characteristics of growth and production. It is the latter endowment 

 by nature which makes the art of uniting plants chiefly valuable; for if 

 plants were disposed to merge their characters as they do their tissues, 

 grafting would have been abandoned by the ancients as an art of confusion 

 rather than accepted by them as a foundation of systematic production. 

 From this point of view nature renders great service to man both by what 

 it refuses and by that which it consents to do for him. 



Both budding and grafting are accomplished with hard, dormant tissues 

 awaiting the growth-impulse; also with soft, active and herbaceous tissues 

 but the methods and the environment are different. There is in fact a 

 certain analogy between the successful grafting of hard and soft tissues 

 and the growth from hard and soft cuttings as indicated on page 64. The 

 difference in affinities, and in successful methods of contact, are such that: 

 (1) Certain plants unite by all methods of budding or grafting; (2) other 

 plants unite by some methods and not by others; (3) other plants will 

 unite by no known methods. As no one person can possess the full record 

 of human experience on this point, the trial of different plants and methods 

 is always open to the amateur, and, though his results will be mainly re- 

 discoveries, they will be none the less original and satisfying. 



Essentials to Budding and Grafting. Next to natural consent or 

 affinity, which has been sufficiently emphasized, indispensable conditions 

 are the following: 



