ROOTS FROM LEAVES 127 



to propagate many of our flowering or ornamental 

 shrubs, which either (like the HIBISCUS) do not pro- 

 duce fertile seeds, or would not come up exactly the 

 same from seed as in the case of the CROTON and 

 PANAX. In some cases a branch is bent down to the 

 ground, and a part of it kept covered with damp earth 

 till roots have formed. In others, earth is put round 

 the stem or branch, bound on with a piece of cloth 

 and kept moist. When the roots have grown, as 

 they soon do, the branch can be cut off, and planted 

 separately. 



Adventitious roots and buds will even arise in some 

 cases from a leaf, e.g. from the notches in the edge 

 of the leaf of BRYOPHYLLUM without being put into 

 the ground, or even darkened, as every one knows who 

 has had one hung up in his house. If a leaf of a 

 BEGONIA is cut off and the base stuck into moist earth 

 or sand, roots will soon grow out, and after them a bud, 

 also adventitiously, and so a new plant be produced. 

 This is a common way of propagating these plants. 



There is one family of plants, the GESNERACE^E, 

 in many of which this happens in the natural state. In 

 DIDYMOCARPUS (one of this family) after the seed has 

 germinated, one of the cotyledons dies, as also do the 

 stem-bud and the radicle. The remaining cotyledon 

 grows till it becomes a very large leaf, lying flat on 

 the ground. At its base adventitious roots strike down 

 into the soil, and an adventitious bud becomes the 

 flowering stem. 



3. In chapter iii we learnt that one of the chief 

 functions of roots was to fix the plant firmly in the 

 soil, and that the great combined length of its many 



