PROPAGATION BY LAYERS. 



237 



and sometimes at both seasons, on the same stool. The shoots being 

 brittle are generally twisted, or slit through, and the slit kept open 

 with a fragment of stick or stone. When they are tongued the 

 tongue is generally made on the upper side of the shoot, fig. 183, which 

 greatly lessens the risk of breaking the shoot when bending it down. 



Hardy herbaceous plants, such as the chrysanthemum and the car- 

 nation, are frequently layered. The shoots are chosen when of suffi- 

 cient length, the lower leaves cut off, and the shoot pegged down and 

 covered with sandy loam, or sand and leaf-mould. 



Fig. 186. 



A carnation layered. 



Shrubby plants in pots kept under glass may 

 either be layered by laying down the entire plant on 

 its side, or by placing pots under it, or raising pots 

 among its branches, and layering the shoots into 

 these. The shoot may either be laid down into the 

 pot, or brought up through a hole in its bottom, or 

 in its side ; a tin case filled with soil or moss may 

 be suspended from the plants, and the shoots ringed, 

 as indicated in figs. 188 and 189, or a ring of bark Layering a cutting. 

 being taken off, the wounded part may be enveloped in 

 a mass of loam covered with moss, a mode practised by the Chinese. 

 The moss, in either case, may be kept moist by suspending near it, and 

 somewhat higher, a vessel of water with some worsted threads, con- 

 necting the water with the moss, and acting as a siphon. 



The soil in which plants are layered should, in general, be that in 

 which the parent plants naturally thrive best, but with a mixture of 

 sand, or with the wounded part entirely enveloped in sand or powdered 

 charcoal, to prevent it from retaining too much water, which would 

 prevent the wound from protruding granular matter, and cause it to 

 rot. Plants which grow in heath soil, such as most of the Ericaceae, 



