CUTTAGE 101 



plants grown under glass. Many propagators think they 

 will produce flowerless plants. 



147. Blind vs. flowering wood. L. C. Corbett tested this belief 

 that "blind wood," is inferior to "flower wood" in the propagation of 

 roses. Each year for five years wood was selected respectively from 

 these two classes of shoots to test the cumulative effect of prop- 

 agation through a series of years. As to rooting ability and growth, 

 little difference was noticed. During the first year the flowering 

 wood plants produce 156 per cent more flowers than plants prop- 

 agated from blind wood, but during the next two years the per- 

 centage decreased instead of increased. The percentage of flowers 

 on the latter also decreased, but not in so great proportion. As a 

 result of these experiments the author concludes that where bloom 

 rather than stock plants is desired, the flowering wood is decidedly 

 the better, but the cumulative effect of propagating roses from one 

 or the other year after year is not marked. 



148. Suckers are leafy shoots produced from adven- 

 titious buds on the underground parts of plants. 



The term is sometimes applied (1) to aerial roots or 

 holdfasts of orchids and other epiphytal plants and (2) 

 to shoots which sprout from the trunk. Properly, how- 

 ever, these last are water sprouts (149). Suckers often 

 follow injuries by bugs, tools, etc., to the roots, also 

 from weakness or decrepitude in the tree head, or be- 

 cause of excess of plant food at the point whence they 

 arise. All plants that produce them may be easily prop- 

 agated by cuttings of the producing parts. 



For instance, certain kinds of plum and cherry stocks must be 

 carefully handled to prevent sucker formation ; but for plant prop- 

 agation the stools of blackberries, red raspberries, etc., are often 

 severely root pruned by thrusting a sharp spade full depth of the 

 blade into the soil around the plant so as to cut the roots six or 

 eight inches from the stool and again farther out. Every cut piece 

 will produce a plant. Instead of using a spade the stools are often 

 removed and the ground deeply cut with a disk harrow run in two 

 directions at right angles across the field. See Root Cuttings (162). 



149. Water sprouts are shoots or limbs of one season's 

 growth produced from latent or adventitious buds on 

 trunks and branches of well-established trees, mainly 

 near where limbs have been .removed. See Suckers 

 (148). 



