OJV PROP A GA TION B T CUTTINGS. 21 5 



all leaf-bearing stems may be rooted, there are great differences as to 

 the time and skill needed for their conversion into plants. 



Selecting Plants from which the Cuttings are to be Taken. Every plant 

 from which cuttings are taken ought to be healthy, otherwise it will 

 probably lack the power of forming roots, and will become a diseased 

 plant. It is found from experience that cuttings taken from the lower 

 branches of plants which are near the soil, root more readily than such 

 as are near the summit of the plant and are surrounded by drier air ; 

 doubtless because the tissue of the wood which contains the nutriment 

 is in a more concentrated and hardened state in the latter case than in 

 the former. Hence the practice of putting plants which are difficult to 

 strike into a warm moist atmosphere, and keeping them there till they 

 have produced shoots sufficiently soft in texture to insure their rooting. 

 Hence cuttings of evergreens, such as the holly and laurel, strike more 

 readily after a wet season than after a dry one, and better in the Irish 

 nurseries than in those of England or France. Hard-wooded plants, 

 such as heaths, should make their young wood in a warm, close, moist 

 atmosphere, ami the propagating-house should have the same moist, 

 still, unchanging atmosphere, as if it were under a bell-glass. The 

 following are some of the expedients adopted by Mr. Cunningham, of 

 the Comely Bank Nursery, Edinburgh, one of the most successful 

 propagators. The more rare plants which are to be propagated are 

 planted in a bed of sandy peat and leaf-mould, or of some such soil, 

 where they are found to grow much more freely than in pots, and 

 speedily to produce shoots, which are taken off in a young and tender 

 state, and struck in sand. Various modes are adopted to induce the 

 plants which are to be propagated from to protrude young shoots, such 

 as when they have small leaves, like heaths, &c., by bending down, 

 twisting them, &c. ; and in the case of plants having larger leaves, 

 such as the Statice arborea, or some of the more rare fuchsias, by 

 cutting a notch in the stem above every bud, and inserting a wooden 

 wedge in the notch to keep it open, in consequence of which the as- 

 cending sap being checked, every bud protrudes a shoot, which is taken 

 off in a tender state, with or without the base of old wood from which 

 it sprang, according to circumstances. In some cases the shoot is taken 

 off, and the base left to produce other shoots from the latent buds ; in 

 other cases, the shoot and its base are taken off together, and occasion- 

 ally, before taking off the shoot and its base, a notch is made below the 

 bud as well as above it, and the lower notch as well as the upper one 

 is kept open by a wedge, till a callosity is formed on the upper edges 

 of the lower notch, from which roots are very readily protruded, after 

 the cutting (with its base attached) has been taken off and planted 

 in sand. 



Selecting the Shoot. The wood of the present or of the past year is 

 almost invariably chosen for cuttings. In the case of plants which are 

 not difficult to strike, a portion of the young shoot is cut off at any 

 convenient distance from the branch from which it proceeded, and of 

 such a length as may be considered most convenient for forming a 

 plant. Thus in the case of willows, gooseberries, currants, &c., from 



