PEOPAGATION.] 



PEACTICE OF HOETICULTUEE. 



[single lea. yes. 



hinders the formation of roots. Nature 

 makes vain efforts, and the cutting suffers, 

 decays, and dies, in spite of its disposition to 

 vegetate." 



It is a rule with all practical gardeners, that 

 the root end of a cutting should be close be- 

 tween a leaf-bud. Every one, however, seems 

 to have a mode of his own in managing cut- 

 tings ; and as the whole are too numerous to 

 describe, we give the following by Professor 

 Delacroix. "My cutting," he says, "is 

 placed entirely under-ground, so as to form a 

 subterranean curve, of which the convexity is 

 uppermost, the very middle of the curve being 

 on a level with the surface of the soil. At 

 this middle point there must be a good eye, 

 or a small shoot. In this way the whole 

 length of the cutting is protected by earth, 

 and the smaller end, instead of becoming the 

 seat of dryness, which is always more or 

 less injurious, becomes a passage for absorp- 

 tion. The bud, which, under these circum- 

 stances, is the only part exposed to the air, 

 bears, without injury, or rather, with advan- 

 tage, all the causes of excitement." — "Although 

 I did not commence my experiments before 

 the end of June," says a writer on this subject, 

 " I have seen quite enough to satisfy me 

 that the method may be of serious advan- 

 tage. Two drills, about three inches apart, 

 were drawn parallel with each other, in a 

 kitchen garden of indifferent quality, situ- 

 ated on a calcareous plain near Be8an9on. A 

 Imndred cuttings of apples, pears, plums, 

 apricots, tulip-trees, roses, &c., almost all of 

 one year's wood, were bent and buried in the 

 manner described, with their ends in the two 

 drills. They were watered a few times ; and, 

 at this moment, every cutting in the open air, 

 and exposed to the full sunshine, is just as fresh 

 as it was when planted. In most of them, the 

 part exposed to the air (the bud) ia the seat 

 of active vegetation, especially in the pear 

 and tulip trees, the buds of which have al- 

 ready made some progress." 



AVhen the means at command of the propa- 

 gator are limited, there is a method of striking 

 cuttings in vials of water. A writer in the 

 Gardener's Chronicle, thus describes hia prac- 



tice : — " I tie vial-bottles together by the 

 necks, and hang them in the windows of our 

 small greenhouse, having filled them with 

 clean soft water. I then put in slips of salvia, 

 calceolaria, mimulus, myrtle, or anything I 

 wish to propagate of the same description of 

 plants. In about two or three weeks, or 

 a month, the little silver-like roots appear; 

 and in a week or ten days I plant them in 

 small pots well watered. They never seem to 

 flag or mind the change, and I rarely lose a 

 slip. Myrtles are longer in forming roots ; 

 cuttings from the same plant have varied from 

 six weeks to twelve months. They were planted 

 in November. A string of bottles I also 

 hang against the back of the greenhouse, 

 where they have plenty of light ; and they do 

 equally well, although not quite so quickly." 

 This practice is old, and well adapted to soft- 

 wooded plants ; but even some of the hard- 

 wooded kinds, such asazalias, will strike freely 

 with this treatment. 



Light has a great effect on the colouring 

 matter of some plants. Ducaisne found that, 

 in the madder plant, when the lower parts of 

 it were enclosed in cases, glazed at the side 

 with transparent green, red, or yellow glass, 

 the leaves and stem of the part surrounded by 

 red glass became pallid, and exhibited signs 

 of suffering in a greater degree than under 

 the other colours ; but uU were more or less 

 affected. 



PROPAGATING BY SINGLE LEAVES. 



Some plants possess the peculiarity of 

 producing adventitious buds upon their upper 

 surfaces and edges ; and some leaves, like 

 those of the echeverias, strike root soon after 

 they fall to the soil. Some genera, as the 

 gloximia, gesnera, clianthus, and others, re- 

 quire to have only the footstalk of their leaves 

 planted in sandy soil, in which, with a proper 

 temperature, they will produce young plants. 

 These leaf-cutticgs form, at first, a callosity at 

 their base ; then roots ; aud, lastly, a bud, 

 from which the future plant is organised. 

 Some plants produce this bud more freely 

 than others ; while a few exhibit great back- 

 wardness in producing it at all. 



948 



